Sydney-based producer/multi-instrumentalist/singer Jamie Lloyd certainly managed to attract significant acclaim for his 2006 debut album Trouble Within, its melodic blend of funk influences, songwriting and house-derived rhythms being compared to the likes of mid-period Matthew Herbert and Jamie Lidell. Indeed, following Trouble Within’s release, Lloyd continued to enjoy success throughout 2007, being picked up by prestigious German touring agency Backroom Entertainment (home also to Tiefschwarz and Lindstrom), and performing alongside Jazzanova and Henrik Schwarz. Two years on, this follow-up effort More Trouble acts as a remix companion piece to Trouble Within, and sees tracks from that album being reworked for the dancefloor by a brace of prestigious European names like Quarion, Trickski, Zwicker, alongside several local producers, including Poxymusic, Jimi Polar and Betaville Orchestra.

Quarion’s opening remix of May I? nicely introduces the overriding aesthetic that guides this 11 track collection, kicking things off with a smooth, Euro-tinged minimal tech-house reworking that emerges from crisp, gliding 4/4 snares, buzzing digitally-treated vocal snippets and dubbed-out bass pads, into shimmering centre-of-the-floor house that carries more than a hint of Italo in its shimmering synth arpeggios. Trickski meanwhile reshapes You And I into streamlined tech-house, bending Lloyd’s original soulboy vocal inflections into a mass of cut-up pitchbending that makes him almost sound like a robot, as flickering snares dance back and forth through the mix amidst a fluid backdrop of electro blips, jangling melodic keys and subtly-deployed shakers, in an offer that recalls Chris Duckenfield’s Swag productions.

While the main abiding aesthetic at work here leans towards ultra-smooth tech-house, Poxymusic manage to inject some extremely welcome ‘grit’ with their fidget-house centred reworking of What We Have, which places menacing buzzing bass pulses beneath a treacherous backbone of broken house rhythms, as cut-up vocal elements stutter and tic in a manner that easily stands alongside Switch’s productions as one of the stronger examples of the genre – indeed, it represents a serious highlight here. Indeed, many of this collection’s most interesting moments arrive when the remixers in question deviate from the house-centred theme here, as evidenced by Betaville Orchestra’s surreal venture down into tribal, ragga-inflected beats and chanted vocals that gets disrupted at points by what sounds like a digitally reprocessed radio broadcast and the ambience of chirping crickets, before Fang Jr. takes Lloyd’s smooth soul vox on a trip to the darkside amidst clicking electro/hiphop beats and eerie minor-key synths. Very nice stuff that presents a more than worthy remix companion to Lloyd’s impressive debut and sees Future Classic maintaining their established high standards.

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