Ever since that beautifully bald, impeccably shiny head of his laughed out at you from a certain legendary Global Underground album, Lee Burridge has always been dance music’s essential maverick. In the clubbing whirlpool that was late nineties, where almost every dance floor was seething with toughened-up disco loops and Dutch trance arpeggios, Burridge made the underground a sexy, fun place to be. Segueing earth-shattering broken beat, dub-inflected techno and wobbly US deep house seemed to make total sense to Burridge and his inventiveness drew in two avid fans, Sasha and Craig Richards, to convince Burridge to leave hedonistic Hong Kong and take his sound global.

Justifiably 2000/2001 proved to be a zeitgeist for Burridge and tagged him as a selector for the new millennium: the monumentous Tyrant mix had Burridge and Richards gloriously stripping dance music of its pretensions and effectively look to the darker corners of techno and breaks while his NuBreed album eschewed the linear, ketamine driven progressive mentality of the time and made tech-house sexy again. On that album, artists and producers as disparate as Aaron Carl, B.L.I.M. and Heiko Laux all sat together at Burridge’s twisted aural feast as compadres and the feast was served up with a wondrous but steely resolve by a man reveling in new found appreciation. That NuBreed will be remembered as one of the great ones and if there is one definitive thing that can be said about Burridge it is this: he is an impeccable educator that is always right on the edge of what’s next. From the Tyrant albums through to his Nubreed and 24:7 mixes for Global Underground, no other DJ has wowed while turning genre’s on their heads than Lee.

Despite this reputation as a mercurial and unpredictable talent, Burridge’s latest mix, for the mighty Balance series is, well, surprisingly ‘balanced’. Lee has stated that this is a club mix and that listening to all three discs is representative of what he does to heads on dance floors, but overall it’s tough and linear, lean and mean with little of the unexpected twists and turns associated with the man. This is no nonsense Burridge, not grinning and laughing like on the cover of NuBreed but snarling and sneering through the strobe lights. It is proper modern club music, no quirky detours here and from the first digital mutters on disc one to last stomping kick drum on disc three it is a relentless ascension into dance floor delirium.

The first disc is an exercise in genre du jour, European deep house and Burridge calls out the current big guns to present a swirling, seductive set that pushes and pulls in the right places; Efdermin’s bristling Bergwein whispers you into emotive territory but the dry, rolling techno of Dettman & Klock’s dangerous Dawning tugs you back into things. Men of the moment Ferrer & Sydenham shimmer with the gorgeously menacing The Back Door and the haunting Dragonloop by Marcus Wogull eases proceedings to a slow simmer as Burridge closes out with Paul Daley’s dub trance rework of Padilla’s Adios Ayer; a shady look at an Ibiza sunrise through dark, hazy eyes.

The second set takes you into 2am territory; druggy, twisted, restrained but always driving you to that predictable point. It is not Burridge at his most magical but certainly him at his most unforgiving. That man from Berlin Efdemin offers the disc’s only light moment, a sublime interpretation of Databolism’s Henry & Dennis, otherwise it’s tough, tight minimal that shuffles and waddles like a dribbling freak chasing shadows on the dance floor. The brooding We Scick by David Squlliace & Alpha Romeo is the kind of techno twisting faces inside out around Europe at the moment and here it forms a formidable centerpiece for Burridge along with veteran Baby Ford’s pulsing Bubblebath and the Broke’s boozy booty tech cut Ladypink. From there the disc goes a little awry as Burridge strolls down all too familiar avenues allowing the by the numbers ket-tech of Jorge Savoretti and Tigerskin to take a stranglehold. The always awesome Buttrich makes it a little interesting with his trippy, rhythmic Programmer but you could honestly hear this set pumping out of almost every club in Europe at the moment.

The final disc though is pure Burridge and more than worth the price of admission. Bustling and funky, hair raising and hilarious, it’s fucked-up techno and it rocks. Dubbel Problematik by Thomas Anderson polka stomps through a mine field of electro pads and the Cocoon-like mayhem of Gabriel Annanda’s Trommelstunde soundtracks Sven Vath dancing like a moth to Fela Kuti congress of conga’s. Current Space Terraza anthem Dirty by Woody takes you from the autobahn to Ford factories in Detroit without a sweat; Moodyman strings, big arpeggio’s and a Latin shuffle that is effortlessly timeless. But it is nothing compared to the sheer pandemonium of Allan Barfords White Geisha’s, a Burridge tune through and through and the clear standout over the three discs. The retro Tresor-like melodies of Pautrice Baummel’s epic Just Electricity close out a stellar disc of electronica stamped by Lee’s deft ear and technical cunning.

Overall though, it is hard to swing from the rafters with rapid glee for this one. Personally I put it down to the state of availability and exclusivity of music for DJs like Lee who thrive on the mystery of the rare and obscure, the reason why selectors like Luciano and Villalobos are digging deeper into their vinyl collections for obscure gems untainted by the download world. As those barriers break down between listener and DJ in the brave new digital world, mix cds really have to be something special to bleed your dollars from you and while this one is certainly worth it’s value (three packed discs not too mention a formidable collection of music), it is not as jaw dropping as his others mixes. This is Burridge in head down mode and his Balance sounds like a fantastic bootlegged download of some set, somewhere last week. Next to seeing Burridge live it’s the best thing but compared to his wondrous back catalogue of mixes you have to ask “Where’s the magic Lee? Where’s the magic?”