Various Artists: Channel 3: A Compilation of Output Recordings

There are few true wide-eyed Svengalis left in the world of electronic music; blindly optimistic pioneers who forge ahead with eternal hope in dance music and, to an extent, its culture. Trevor Jackson, his head perpetually wrapped in sunglasses, is just such a monk of the music, from his early British post-disco days to designing record covers for many of the time’s stars, and as DJ/producer of his own multi-striped party mixes as Playgroup. His knowledge of that sweet spot, where house and disco meet rock music and electro meets electric guitar, has led him to recruit and release to an unsuspecting world modern artists like the Rapture, Black Strobe, and Colder, along with figureheads of yesteryear Yello. This release, his Output label’s third compilation, collects a variety of styles that have come to define a unique aesthetic associated with Mr. Jackson: dark disco and electro-pop informed by the last three decades of dance-oriented dispatches found on pastel-labeled vinyl records everywhere.

Happily outlasting the electroclash “movement” by simply outmaneuvering its pigeonholing problems, Output summarily defeated the limitations of Larry Tee’s fashionistas. No one, not even nostalgic robots looking for that exact replication of a favorite new wave keyboard sound, can stand constant aping forever.

Correctly, then, the electro-styled entries here bear out a desire to go in another direction from those electroclash cute ditties. The best new electro music, layering detached vocal over a bass-heavy throb, is reverent to its forebears without completely going over the edge into pure rehash. Black Strobe is the Parisian duo DJ Ivan Smagghe and producer Arnaud Rebotini, and they bring a new vitality with their own dark, sinister overtones. Black Strobe’s knack for adding a cold stare to the grinning face of dance culture is appropriately self-described by the band as “dark disco”. “Abwehr Disco” uses suspense and a fuzzy beat-box feel. These sinister Frenchmen will be skulking around for some time to come. Rekindle’s “Ice Skating Girl” contains an abbreviated New Order guitar riff, giving it a quaint pop feel, while a vocalist raps along. 7-Hurtz contributes “LVL” as the coda of the record, with its tinkling synthesizers and bird chirping samples ending things on a relaxed tone.

The electro-punk namesake actually fits when hung on Manhead’s retooling of ’80s band the Godfathers’ minor hit, “Birth School Work Death”, with its skittering basslines and exasperated vocal squelch. The Rapture, NYC’s purported saviors, propped up by endless hype and an album that seemed would never be released, are redeemed, especially when remixed in a tight approximation by Jackson himself here on the band’s “I Need Your Love (Playgroup Dub)”. Jackson strips out the guitar completely, adding a cacophony of minor key synthesizer runs and tom tom percussion for a crispy late night burner. French producer Colder’s “The Slow Descent” is a building mid-tempo cut, with guitar and caustic rhythms that make it sound like some chill-out track for a post-punk dance evening. The strangest specimen here by far is Mu and their cut “Out of Breach”. Maurice Fulton and wife Mutsumi Kanamori spackle creepy vibes into the cracks of this house-meets-Yoko Ono Futurist freakout. With tweaked vocals and echo and delay on everything, the fuzzy beats worm their way in through the background, and it is a downright infectious virus. Mu is compelling and modern. Look for their new full-length on Output this fall. If there are less-than thrilling entries here, DK&’s “Slipstream” is just repetitive to no point, but it fits in this stark landscape.

The Output label represents, if nothing else, a forward motion for dance music and its methodical creep into other genres. Channel 3 is another fine sampler of the freshest bits to come from Trevor Jackson’s friends and collaborators. And, as many times these compilations are meant as teasers for upcoming releases, it is quite titillating.