^ Ero | David Garcet. One of the tracks featured on Danny Howells: Renaissance The Mix Collection.
IIRC the first
Danny Howells CD I bought was, interestingly enough, at a music store in a shopping mall in Manila during the summer over 7 years ago. Aside from the homogeneity of the shoppers (mostly trendy privileged teenage kids of affluent parents) you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between this mall and any American suburban mall. Yeah, it was Danny Howells, Nubreed Global Underground, a 2 disc set.
> Go ahead, pick a city, any city. Or any place for that matter. Slip on your iPod buds and crank up Danny Howells' mixes and let it wash over you. Chicago, evening.
The cover was clean, stark white and featured the very hot, handsome British man Howells, clean shaven and shorn (he has since gone scruffy). I'd totally fuckin' hit it, I thought. But beyond his good looks, his music, how he worked it, was and probably will always be great pleasure for me. Many times it's my personal soundtrack to 21st century life. I listen to it while walking through downtown, riding the subway, or just lying in bed late into the night trancing. I even venture to say he's the equivalent of
Carla and Franca Sozzani, the sister team responsible for the at once classical and innovative vision of Italian Vogue (of which Franca is the editor-in-chief) and a worldwide enterprise of retail and hospitality operations and services much touted for their precise, impeccable elegance and modernity for a discerning lifestyle (Carla runs all that).
My latest get from Howells - Renaissance The Mix Collection - was not bought in a mall, but purchased and downloaded from iTunes directly to my iPhone, just the way Howells would most likely approve of. As always, his reliable signature style carries on in this latest offering.
< Danny Howells: good looks, good music. Hit the pic for his official site. Turn your volume down first then gradually crank it up and dance.Like the Sozzani sisters' tastes and vision, Howells maintains a consistency in his mix of catchy yet restrained synthetic, ambient tunes. His style is controlled, even, and tellingly confident in its restraint. Whereas Sasha, another dj I love, concentrates on bravura like shiny gold tinged with ecstacy to energize his crowds, Howells strings his tunes together like individual pearls, patiently fashioning them into ambient necklaces of sound. I am just as much in bliss experiencing them lying still as I am dancing to them. The individual tracks he chooses are at once unobtrusive and potent with rhythm. His mixes are rare amongst dj's for their elegance and steady transfusion of groove while allowing each carefully selected track the respectful space it deserves.
Howells brings a pleasingly orchestrated, tuneful balance of tech house to the dance floor and steady fuel to the iPod earbud wearing bodies trekking across our techno infused global landscapes.
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