Louden Up Now is one of those records I expected to love on first listen but didn't. And then I kept listening to it for whatever reasons, mostly because I'd already bought it and I wanted to like it and it made decent background music for when I was doing whatever at work. And then all its clings and klongs and crashes and bumpitabumpitas and fucks worked their way into my head and now I really, really like it. So I was amped to see !!! on Saturday night, and they delivered, even though their set was a bit too short considering the $12 door price and Nic Offer wore sweatpants. The thing about !!! songs is that that build; layers just pile on top of each other until it sounds like it's about to explode into some glorious disco fantasia and then it just ... stops. That's it. The song's over. That takes some getting used to. I'm just now lately getting more and more into dance music, so this is pretty foreign territory for me; great hip-hop and rock tracks tend to have some sort of payoff. But I'm learning to love the build. And !!! builds like a motherfucker.

I'd like to throw a ridonkulous big shout-out to Mr. Matos, who, if you didn't know, makes these multiple-CD single-year mix joints where he goes through just about every variety of music known to man (but especially techno) and never repeats a single artist. He's made a few of these things, and he'll sell them to you for a pretty good price if you e-mail him. A few other blogger types do this as well, but my computer at work won't pick up ILM anymore so I have no idea how to find them. Hit me up (lazerbeek@hotmail.com) if you make them; I might want to buy one. But so anyway, I finally got Matos's sets for 1989 and 1997 in the mail this weekend, and they are fiyah. It'll take me a couple of weeks to even digest these things. Why didn't anyone tell me late-80s dancehall was so awesome?