[REKIDS]

Londoner Toby Tobias has been getting his disco on for a long time: his edits have been showing up on labels like Bear Funk for years. And Space Shuffle, his debut album, sure feels like the fruition of long and diligent labor. Most of the album is not dance floor material per se, but there’s a heady, irresistible jive in many tracks that puts the shuffle at least as near the foreground as the space. In some ways it might be easy to call this the album that will start you liking disco if you don’t already, and move on. The lovely poise with which Tobias juggles styles here tells a different story. Some tunes are strung out in the manner of Lindstrøm and others are tightly wound booty shakers, but they all make for an intriguing take on house music that doesn’t sound much like the space-disco to come before it, either.

Most of the album’s early tracks are sedate rather than active. Although their beats at times mean business the atmosphere of spaced-out languor is nevertheless felt more keenly. Instead, the affable grooves of longer tracks “Schoon” and “Eleven” are couched in shorter pieces like “Say It Slow.” The varied track lengths suggest Tobias was more concerned with building a cohesive album than making cuts that could be easily appropriated into DJ sets by themselves. The end result is that Space Shuffle, far more than most dance albums, is best heard from start to finish.

The early section is relaxed overall but also provides a sense of tension via fairly business-like percussion underneath moody melodic arrangements. By the time “Every Move” rolls into view in the middle, the spaced out atmosphere developed in the opening is emphasized beyond all else. From then on the bass lines get chunkier, until “Dave’s Sex Bits” and “The Feeling,” edited from the DJ-ready cuts previously released to 12″, bring things to a climax. At only six and a half minutes and without the long intro found on the single release, “The Feeling” arrives here adapted for instant gratification. Kathy Diamond’s vocal is put front and center by a structure that builds steadily and inexorably according to pop rules. After hearing the album wound down by “The Feeling,” it’s hard not to wish that there were more vocal tracks, as snippets of lyric here and there are all we get on the rest. Still, I’ve enjoyed “The Feeling” more after hearing the rest of the CD than I did on its own, and it’s this feeling of coherence that distinguishes Space Shuffle more than anything.

Space Shuffle has a lot more beef to it than most of what’s put forward as chill out,” but isn’t club ready in the main. In this way, Toby Tobias has crafted something unusual in the extreme, namely a dance album that should be heard in a lively setting but not banged out at 120Db. If it’s an awkward release to pigeonhole, though, it’s just as gratifying a listen, because that awkwardness is a sign Tobias’ perspective here is as self-aware as that of any debut this year.