Daniel Wang presents Balihu 1993-2008

Besides releasing some of the freshest contemporary music, Amsterdam's Rush Hour label continuously looked back to revive some classic electronic masterpieces. They brought back some of Carl Craig's earlier work and put out exclusive box sets with music by Kenny Larkin or Rick Wade.

For their latest release, they teamed up with the legendary Daniel Wang to release a retrospective of the last 15 years of his Balihu label. Together with his then fellow New Yorkers Metro Area, Daniel has been keeping alive the disco sound for more than a decade and must now be considered a forerunner of the new wave of disco music.

As you can expect, Balihu 1993-2008 collects tracks from the label's back-catalogue, which is out of print for a long time. Some tracks were slightly shortened or re-edited to fit on two CDs. According to Rush Hour, the central parts of each song and their basic structure remains unchanged. Needless to say that all tracks were digitally cleaned up and remastered as well.

CD1
01. Daniel Wang - Like Some Dream
02. Daniel Wang - Get Up Get Up
03. Daniel Wang - Warped
04. Daniel Wang - On The Moon
05. Daniel Wang - East Village Hustle
06. Daniel Wang - The Twirl
07. Daniel Wang - In The Street
08. Daniel Wang - In A Golden Haze
09. Daniel Wang - Free Lovin
10. Daniel Wang - Glow Worms
11. Daniel Wang - Sven Shadows
12. Daniel Wang - Disco Delay
13. Daniel Wang - ADSR
14. Daniel Wang - Iye-Ubao
15. Daniel Wang - Ah… N'Arrete Pas
16. Daniel Wang - NYTK (1978 mix)

CD2
01. Daniel Wang - Thousand Mirror Moon *
02. Daniel Wang - Let's Go To Mars
03. Daniel Wang - Solarian Six
04. Carlos Hernandez - Shyboy 123 *
05. Brennan Green - No Matter
06. Daniel Wang - Zeit Ist Ein Fluss *
07. Daniel Wang - Blau Drei
08. Brennan Green - Behind The Ocean
09. Brennan Green - Nolitas Magnet *
10. Ilya Santana - Crystal Sea
11. Ilya Santana - Wicked Sequence *
12. Massimiliano Pagliara - Beach Birds

* CD exclusive track

I guess the tough choice will be which version to get. Balihu 1993-2008 is available on 2 CDs (RH 108CD) or split up over two 2-LPs (RH 108-LP1 & RH 108-LP2, each limited to 500 pieces). All tracks from the LPs are also featured on the CD or the digital download. However, if you don't want to miss a single track, you need to go for the CD version plus the 12-inch sampler (RH 108-12). The latter contains two previously unreleased tracks.

Also let me mention that Beats in Space host Tim Sweeney has put together a mixtape for Pitchfork, which features 16 tracks from this fine release.