Verve Remixed

The progressive sounds of down-tempo music have long claimed a loungey kinship with the reachin' sounds of jazz, even if only through extensive sampling. Now jazz stalwart Verve Records has given a dozen dance music denizens the chance to prove their mettle with remixes of original jazz classics. The source material they've selected comes largely from Verve's top ladies of song -- Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Nina Simone among them -- and the results are suitably classy. Thievery Corporation's reworking of Astrud Gilberto's "Who Needs Forever?" is smooth as silk, a hip-swaying bass line snaking its way through a breezy mesh of beats, Latin guitar leads, and Gilberto's airy coos. Elsewhere, British duo Rae & Christian punch up Dinah Washington's sassy "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?" and Dorfmeister (of Viennese duo Kruder & Dorfmeister) works out any kinks in the grooves of Willie Bobo's sultry Latin workout "Spanish Grease." Both Tricky ("Strange Fruit") and Vienna's Dzihan & Kamien ("Don't Explain") fall under Billie Holiday's spell, the former twisting her signature tune into spooky, dissociated strains of sound in which guitar feedback butts heads with a bright horn section, the latter pair settling for a more beat-friendly, laid-back mood. Whichever path these knob-twiddlers take, the final destination is a smoky after-hours club where the neither the grooves nor the ice ever run out.