The Singles (1997-2006)

German duo Blank & Jones make the kind of dance music that never seems to get any critical respect — widely popular, very straightforward, guaranteed to soundtrack anything anywhere with the word "trance" in it and not name-dropped by hip DJs in general as a result. Which is an incredible pity, because as The Singles demonstrates, the duo clearly aren't out to push back frontiers but just to make people dance and have a good time, and more to the point, to do so with a heavy undercurrent of the kind of classic dark disco and proto-industrial beats they clearly grew up on. As such they slot much more into the realm of acts like Apoptygma Berzerk and Black Strobe more than might be guessed, and the gloss of Europop that slips and slides among their songs always seems to get spiked with the kind of pop/trance that first caught the ear of Wax Trax fanatics precisely because it was derived from similar roots. The Singles careens from one instant fix to another, starting with their inspired reworking of the Cure's "A Forest," with Robert Smith contributing the vocals. Other guest appearances that make clear where Blank & Jones see their lineage include Anne Clark on "The Hardest Heart" and, in a truly left-field move, the Church's Steve Kilbey on the extreme moodout of "Revealed." (In contrast, having Propaganda's legendary singer Claudia Brucken on "Unknown Treasure" is a more readily understandable nod to the past.) If some of the singles are more a pleasant collage of familiar elements — and if the track listing is best heard in bursts rather than all the way through — there's enough hotwiring and instant pop rushes going on to make The Singles worth listening to.