[Desolat]

Apparently the star power on call to remix tracks from Loco Dice’s 7 Dunham Place couldn’t be contained across just one double pack; a second double has just surfaced with a lineup just as strong as the first. While Part 1 found Luciano, Cassy, DJ Sneak, and Mike Huckaby taking cracks the material, part 2 features mixes from Onur Özer, Marcel Dettmann, Marco Carola, and, um, Mike Huckaby.

Corola and Huckaby play things fairly straight, as Carola turns in a fit-and-trim mix buoyed by a short vocal clip, a tight rhythm track, and some nice percussion play in the middle section. Huckaby’s second stab at “Black Truffles in the Snow” is, thankfully, not a bit like his jazzier mix of the same track on the first set. It is, however, a bit too close to some of his other recent mixes for comfort. Still, a driving beat, a Basic Channel-style synth loop, and a short ascending riff are well deployed here, as is one of Huckaby’s killer drops. Phoned in? Perhaps, but effective none the less.

The other two mixes are a different story. Dettmann’s Response 1 and Response 2 mix (or is it mixes?) of “Tight Laces” build from a loping, circular twitch into a full-blown floor monster in two parts. At nearly 13 minutes, Dettmann’s mix may be a bit too clever for its own good; the front end of the mix is consistently shifting, and when Response 2 changes things up at 7:30, it is initially disorienting and potentially momentum killing. Dettmann’s skill ties the two pieces together nicely through recurring motifs, but I’m not sure playing through is an option — so pick your poison, I suppose.

Onur Özer works “Breakfast at Nina’s” into a snapping percussive groove reinforced with some vocal snippets and a nifty bass swerve, but as with Dettmann’s mix, it morphs into something totally different in the back half, as the track artfully falls apart under its own weight, kept moving only by perpetual motion. I’m not sure what exactly led to Dettmann and Özer to go all Villalobos on the material; but isn’t it better for remixers to stretch boundaries and conventions than to play things safe and predictable?