Though his name isn't familiar to most
electronica
listeners,
Vikter Duplaix
earned a volume in
!K7
's epic mix series
DJ-Kicks
thanks to an impressive, rangy credit list -- artists from
Jazzanova
to
Erykah Badu
MC Dynamite
Jermaine Dupri
. For his own feature (the first under his own name),
Duplaix
fashioned a
house
mix ranging far and wide for tracks that probably wouldn't have made much sense out of this setting.
's style isn't that of a traditional
DJ; he's actually more of a selector, choosing tracks he likes and ones that work well together, but never worrying about beat-matching or blending tracks into each other. After a
spoken word
opener from his own
Critical Point
project,
spins through plenty of crucial tracks, but arranges many of them into mini-sets; after a couple of tracks of earthy breaks (
"Hold It Down"
by
4hero
and the excellent keyboard distortion of
P'taah
's
"The Crossing (Evacuation of Form)"
), he breaks in -- courtesy of a retro-computer voice -- and then turns to the sensual
tribal
of
"Feelin Me Feelin You"
Waiwan
and
"Tree of Life"
Osunlade
. His own track, the solid stuttered-funk workout
"Sensuality,"
opens up a few tracks of contemporary
R&B
. Toward the end, he salutes
hip-hop
with tracks from
De La Soul
, hometown friend
Bahamadia
, and
. Besides a few too many reminders explaining whose mix album listeners are tuned into,
is an excellent installment in the series, gathering all manner of groove tracks into a tough, tight mix. ~ John Bush