Azari & III

It’s all happening for Toronto house quintet Azari And III. Retro club smash ‘Hungry For The Power’ has been lighting up hipster dancefloors for the past 12 months; now this one-band acid revival are rumoured to have landed a support slot on Madonna’s 2012 world tour. The first time you listen to their self-titled debut you may have a hard time comprehending the fuss; from the squidgy, nagging beats to singer Fritz Helder’s Prince-tinged falsetto it feels like the record is nothing less or more than a shameless facsimile of mid-’80s Chicago house. With repeated exposure, though, you start to understand what makes Azari And III so special – standouts ‘Into The Night’ and ‘Reckless (With Your Love)’ may be nakedly indebted to the past, but their evocation of the sweaty abandon of the late Regan-era clubbing landscape is infectiously joyous, transporting you to a time when dance music and acid culture were genuinely agents of change and social revolution. What followed, of course, was big beat, Noel Gallagher singing with Chemical Brothers, and DJs being paid ten grand to show up and slap on a few records. Azari And III hark back to the halcyon epoch when it seemed anything was possible for electronic music. It’s that sense of techno paradise reclaimed that makes the album such a joyride.