One of the most interesting things the current archival bent is managing to achieve is getting us to pay attention to records which in their own time might have been overlooked, might have sounded banal, might have been one amongst many, and letting them finally carve out their own discographic space. You could raise an eyebrow: if a record was deemed forgettable the first time why should we return to it? But in fact the gush of moments of great creativity often eclipses records which end up shining quite brightly over time. It happens with Italo, it happens with early techno, it happens with house – and it happened with the third of Vincent Floyd’s reissues on Rush Hour, which seems to be carefully picking through the enormous output of Chicago-based Dance Mania to single out some of its hardest diamonds.
The tracks on the I Dream You 12’’ are made of a mellow sexiness. A kind of ultra-sentimental Chicago house – bright, crystalline, and almost childish in its melodic simplicity – has a sort of melancholia hanging over it, a dreamy adult depth, lending the pieces classic ‘90s freshness a strangely pensive edge. The highlights here are the title track and the full-length version of “Get Up”, both evocative, absorbed little pieces, awash with subdued, cooly soulful rhythms and peppered with theatrical tricks – melodies zooming in and out of view, moments of suspension, the track stopping and opening up onto a different panorama. This is a fresh, glittery record in the key of poolside sadness, good for a particularly hedonistic June gloom.
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