Album Review: House Masters - Masters At Work (Defected Records)

Masters At Work are American duo Louie Vega and Kenny Dope. Over the past 25 years they have been leaders in producing, writing or remixing dance tracks for the likes of Luther Vandross, George Benson and Simply Red.

Defected records have decided to honour the duo in their" House Masters" series: the 4 CD's contained in the package here contain full length versions of some of their finest works.

The first CD contains some of the most commercial works such as their own track Backfired, their brilliant re-mix of Incognito's version of Nights Over Egypt, Nuyorican Soul's track Runaway and The Braxtons track The Boss. The duo always had a knack of producing soulful house tracks with a jazzy bias that have stood the test of time. Anyone who used to listen to Danny Rampling's show on a Friday night on Radio 1 will feel like they have taken a trip to back in the day, when listening to this eclectic album.

CD2 still continues in a commercial vein with their re-mix of Simply Red's Thrill Me, River Ocean's track Love and Happiness.

The third and fourth CD's sees some of the dub mixes of the duo's work from the likes of Jody Watley, Kathy Brown and Ce Ce Peniston, which allows you to hear them getting back to their roots.

Masters at Work indeed.

I give the album 4 out of 5.