Ministry of Sound Anthems II [Box set]

Yes yes, Ministry of Sound put out plenty of albums, particularly classic ones, and seem to get plenty of flack in the reviews (!), but honestly this is brilliant. I was given Anthems I for Christmas last year, and that was pretty good, but this follow up is even better. Mostly because it digs out some of the brilliant but not often seen tracks like DReam, S Express, New Order, Orbital and Billie Ray Martin.

Discs 2 and 3 seem to be chronological as well, but it really is big tune after big tune, great if you buy only one dance album. Faithless, Livin Joy, Modjo (what a track!), Olive, Stardust, the list goes on.

I'm lovin it! Couldn't recommend it more...i'll be getting it for people for Christmas...

Ministry of Sound are back with yet another release, Anthems II, which is a follow up to last year's Anthems album, which covered 16 years worth of dance music - this time the team pick out more goodies from 1991 to the present day.

CD1 is mainly early 90s dance "pop" - it's all the big hits that charted - so depends on the clubs you were visiting back in the day, but this mainly wasn't playing there. The mixing is terribly pedestrian, an example is the move from the 4x4 of Blue Monday to Orbital's Chime, which just seems like they have cut a piece from the New Order track and pasted it for 8 bars. Some of the better tracks on here include Snap's Rhythm is a Dancer with it's robotic feel; the beautiful vocals of Billie Ray Martin on Your Loving Arms - which to me was a classic; and Orbital's Chime, which still sends a chill down my spine. Some definite stinkers here include the rather annoying MIDI saxophone of Guru Josh with Infinity (what a blunder that was on Top Of The Pops?) and D-Ream's UR The Best Thing. Otherwise this has the usual fodder you find on this type of compilation, though having FSOL's Papua New Guinea really scored points for me.

CD2 is mainly late 90s dance and early 2000s music - some nice stuff on here includes York's cheeky sampling of Chris Rea with On The Beach; French dance masters Modjo with Lady, brilliant; Ultra Nate's diva like vocals on Free and Tori Amos' Professional Widow, perfectly remastered by the legend Armand Van Helden. The mixing is still very pedestrian and doesn't seem to be have been done by a human, as it's just not the level you'd expect to see when you go to the MOS on a Saturday night.

CD3 is all the new stuff, from 2003 onwards - starts really well with Stardust's classic Music Sounds Better With You right through to track 15, then it goes downhill. Shame as this is the best CD of the whole lot, it beats the others hands down. Other "anthems" for me include Daft Punk's Around The World, Indo's UK garage anthem R U Sleepin' and Mylo's cheeky mash up with The Miami Sound Machine. So far this has to be the better CD of the box.

To be honest with you I think this set is rubbish - if it wasn't for CD3's quality this would have got a star off me, as most of this stuff has been on countless CDs - even unmixed in completion, but here they've chopped and changed it - anyone would have thought this CD had been to the butchers - they have been rather calculating with the cuts too, so it fits all perfectly in 80 minutes, and even some of that is to cut duller moments in the music. The mixing is poor too, OK, the beat matching stays pretty good, but there's no variety, or clever tricks pulled off, as a DJ might do during his or her set. The imagination is just so closed off it's actually quite sad. I would suggest if you like these tracks you buy the first 5 Ministry Of Sound Annuals, as they were absolutely amazing and mixed by real DJs who actually went to clubs worldwide and were made household names because they were masters of their domain. This, sadly is no where near the quality I expect from the MOS team.

Another thing to point out here is that there is hardly anything from 2008-09 here at all, OK, 3 tracks at the end of CD3, otherwise this doesn't really have more than Anthems I did.

Any mix CD from before 2000 is better than this mix wise, otherwise I guess it's a good selection of chart dance music. Depends on how you see things - to me this just represents 17 years of commercial dance music; not the music you'd hear at Nation, or God's Kitchen.

The Ad for this looks great & whets the appetite for some killer tracks. In fairness there are some true classics on these 3 discs such as Robert Miles haunting piano led 'children', New Orders doom laden electro 'Blue Monday', the Prodigy still sound edgy & Daft punk's hypnotic "around the world'continues to weave a spell.
There is certainly a fair few genuine anthems here for sure but 3 discs? 'fraid not. Some tracks have not aged well, such as Guru Josh's 'Infinity' or Blue boy's 'remember me', while others are quite frankly as rubbish now as when they were 1st released, the MAW, N'joi & Bel amour, to name just a few, were naff and no amount of time is going to change that.
It's great to revisit some classic anthems and here the likes of voodoo ray, Tori Amos & Leftfield are a pleasure to return to but there is just way too much z-list material here for this to be of any value. You will find yourself hitting the skip button too often.
A single disc release packed with true classics would have been great but there is just far too much filler & not enough killer to make this worth bothering with.