Unnatural Selection

Bearing more than a slight resemblance to Orbital's Hartnoll brothers on the CD's cover photo, Jon Sutton and Barry Jamieson have been in the dance music game for just as long, although their limited discography would suggest otherwise. After releasing several club-tastic U.K. hits in the early '90s, the duo, whose Positive Vinyl label released the first-ever remix by Sasha, took a step back to focus on work with other artists, most notably BT, John Digweed, and Boy George. With over half a decade since Evolution's last release, Sutton and Jamieson finally return to the studio and create an album that unsurprisingly sounds just like the pack they've been running with. And given the culture's taste for dark and trance-y house, that makes Evolution club-tastic again. The lead single, "Walking on Fire," plays the light/dark dynamic to a T, while never letting up the beats. Vocals by Jayn Hanna ensure that crossover potential is there in spades. It's far more appealing when Sutton and Jamieson show their age by naïvely slipping into sounds that are no longer so fashionable, like the bombastic acid trance of "Blaster" that comes complete with a robot call to party straight out of your rave-iest dreams. "Better House Music" could have conquered the same nostalgic terrain with a (giggle giggle) rave siren! But the molten bass and creepy-crawly vocals display the clear generational effect that happens when two old dogs work out some new tricks. None of which is to imply an age limit on producing good music. But styles tend to be more relevant and exciting when they remain in the moment and don't start to sound like a history lesson. Unless of course the lesson is the focus.