Consumer Guide Album

Liquid Todd: Action [Ultra, 1999]
Former college sportswriter Todd Wilkinson didn't get to host K-Rock's syndicated Saturday-night mix show by pumping exotica. The interlocking beats and catchphrases of his first mix CD aren't what any Z-100 fan would call pop, but they're cheap, effective, and party-hearty enough to insure fun-fun-fun from beginning to end, which is more than Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, or Fratboy Slim himself has managed. Having gotten our attention with the church-bell tune of Mike & Charlie's "I Get Live," he cedes the floor to Fratboy Slim for five minutes and we're off to the races. The ebullience flags as ass-shaking turns endurance contest, but never settles for the functionalist minimalism this supposedly hedonistic scene runs on. Compiling such an hour from the tens of thousands of hours of techno product out there ought to be easy. I've begun dozens of CDs that prove it isn't. A-