(Resist/Inertia)

Miss Kittin is a lady of many talents. She sings, as can be found on Felix da Housecat’s Madame Hollywood and Silver Screen Shower Scene. She produces, as has been seen in her productions with The Hacker and her debut solo album, I-Com. And she DJs, as you may have seen on her tours around the globe.

Her latest mix album sees Miss Kittin follow on from former collaborator Felix da Housecat and eclectic meister Erol Alkan and release A Bugged Out Mix. Bugged Out Recordings was launched in 2000 to reflect the sounds being heard at the Bugged Out club nights held throughout the UK and Europe. Miss Kittin, a frequent guest at the club nights, delivers a pair of mixes: the first entitled Perfect Night, while the latter is called Perfect Day.

Perfect Night kicks off with the cheeky vocals of Princess Superstar on Perfect, mixing into DJ K!’s Plastic People. El Loco’s Ibiza stands out, its pumping dirty techno unexpectedly tough. Cajmere’s Percolator soon kicks in some acid squelches, before the mix turns techier, whether soulful techno (Armando’s 151), trance-like (Misc’s Vakuum Audio) or minimalist (Adam Beyer’s A Walking Contradiction (Part 1)).

The Hacker Remix of Fixmer and McCarthy’s Freefall is an electrotech gem, the vocals (“Broken free, been shotdown”) the perfect touch. This is followed by a pair of solid tech numbers: The Chemical Brothers’s B-side Base 6 and Drexciya’s Lost Vessel. Soon the mix turns to a peak time house sound, complements of GE & GM’s Seven Eleven. The party sounds continue with tracks from Modeselektor (the NY house sounds of Hasir) and Awesome 3 (the rave anthem Don’t Go).

But all nights must come to a close, and this one starts to wind down with some hip-hop vocals and eclectic beats from Front 242 (First In, First Out) and DJ Maxximus & Something J (Destiny). Next up is Squarepusher’s quirky My Red Hot Car, before Acrosome’s Perfect Girl aptly predicts “when night turns to day.”

It’s now time for day, or at least the Perfect Day disc. For this mix Miss Kittin has moved away from her peak time club style, as found on Perfect Night, and instead delved into the more eclectic and ambient nooks of her record collection. Not that all the tracks are necessary a ray of sunshine…

The mix awakens with the strange spoken track Sting ?3 (That’s Good) from Si Begg. It properly kicks in with the sweet and spring-like Shadows, from Wagon Christ, before building up to the complex, layered techno of Donato Dozzy and Brando Lupi’s Metal Slave with tracks from Monolake and Baby Ford. The sounds touched upon are quite varied, the mix moving between sweet pop (Saint Etienne’s Heart Failed), harsh techno (Richard Devine’s Untitled A1 and Toasty’s The Knowledge) and female rapping (Another Level featuring MC Soom-t).

The final stages of the mix settle down to more ambient and chilled out sounds. The adjective sweet aptly describes Sixtoo’s Transfer Please, Perfect Wednesday, as well as a pair of tracks from Villalobos and Static featuring female vocals (The Cassy Lee Mix of Easy Lee and Inside Your Heaven, respectively). A worldlier style of ambient sounds are visited for Biosphere’s Le Grand Dôme and Twine’s Kalea Morning, before the final whisper of Christ.’s Medulla Oblongata brings the album to a close.

A Bugged Out Mix By Miss Kittin is certainly a good mix CD, and it does a great job of showing off Miss Kittin’s deft track selection and entertaining DJing style. However, I can’t help feeling that it lacks that something extra to make it special. And after all, when you want something perfect, the standards are high.