Compilations like Juke Joint II are the DiGiorno of mixes, culled with such impeccable taste and inspiring breadth that they sound like your music-obsessive friend could be mixing them live in your living room. Normally, buying such mixes seems like a lazy shortcut; if the groups are good, you buy the albums. But the duo of Boozoo Bajou — German producers Peter Heider and Florian Seyberth — flawlessly thread in theme and theory, pulling out the subtle interlocking grooves in artists as far-ranging as Tony Joe White and the Meters, then adding a sweet-comedown finish by Josh Rouse. Although these silken segues have become the baseline for such collections, Bajou also excels at divergent disconnections like Hanna Hukkelberg's "Cast Anchor," a sullen singer-songwriter track that's all floating horns, lemonade and feet dangled in the lake. And when you get to the pair's original contributions, you begin to see a free-floating pattern in the eclectic scatter, a unifying focus on deep beats, dreamy spaces and tripped-out tangents that gorgeously cycle through every conceivable mood.
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