Masters at Work

Masters at Work -- Kenny "Dope" Gonzales and Little Louie Vega -- put together the BBE label's fifth volume of Stop & Listen. An unmixed, two-disc set, Gonzalez and Vega split the time playing selector; the men are given separate discs to pay tribute to roots and current inspirations. As one can imagine, the results are diverse and colorful, spanning generations of dance music with little, if any, attention paid to boundaries. Vega's disc has plenty of delights, including Pepe Bradock's "Deep Burnt" (a heavenly deep house epic in a very rare CD appearance), Anu Pillai's remix of Isolee's "Beau Mot Plage" (which adds an assortment of flutes, guitars, female vocals, stomps, and Latin percussion to an already stunning house production), and Joey Negro's dub of Blaze's "Wishing You Were Here" (another uplifting track from those legends-to-too-few). Vega looks to the past just as often as the present, including two Loft/Paradise Garage classics with Candido's "Thousand Finger Man" and Taana Gardner's "When You Touch Me." Gonzalez takes over for the second disc and goes even further back, to Nina Simone's timeless "See Line Woman" and Stan Getz and Luiz Bonfa's 1963 bossa nova cut "Saudade Vem Correndo" (featuring Maria Toledo on vocals). The dizzy breeze of Slum Village's "2U 4U" is perfectly complemented by the following Jill Scott song, "Slowly Surely"; those are two of the later tracks selected by Gonzalez, who also tips his hat to the late-'70s/early-'80s heyday of New York's dance scene with Gwen Guthrie's "Seventh Heaven" and Sun Palace's "Rude Movements." The entire thing is packed with outstanding songs and is highly conducive to front-to-back spins. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide