Lee Burridge - Balance 012

Depressingly enough, Lee Burridge is one of today's most respected house DJs and producers. Depressing, because if this is the best triple album he can offer, house music has become that most offensive of things in art; boring. For a genre of music with such a rich and exciting history, that isn't exactly reassuring. Many house fans like to think of the genre as progressive and forward thinking, but Mr B. neatly demonstrates that this is just not the case. House has been wallowing in the stagnant end of the pool at its Balearic villa for while now, and this is just one more example of where that lands us. To be fair, there are some okay tunes in among the lacklustre beats, but they are too few and too far between on the three(three!) discs to sustain any interest. You're hard pressed to name a single standalone track, and by the time you get to the more mobile grooves of Luca Bacchetti's Rolling Brooklyn you'll probably have fallen asleep at the remote. What could be the mitigating factor when the judge considers the sentencing for this compilation? Who knows, maybe someday Crimes Against Art will be on the statute, and we will have our justice. Fingers crossed, eh? [James Blake]