Boogie 2Nite (CD - 2007)

Personnel: Dipesh Parmar, Sarita Borge, Ben Cook (programming).

Audio Mixers: Ben Macklin; Carl Ryden; Aaron McClelland; Matt Schwartz; Pete Craigie; Roy Malone.

Audio Remixers: Seamus Haji; The Passengerz.

Arrangers: Marc Jackson Burrows; Sarita Borge; Matt Schwartz; Bimbo Jones.

The debut album from Nadia Shepherd and Cherise Roberts, former singers with Big Brovaz and now known as Booty Luv, looks like a 1970s disco album: the cover and the album title, Boogie 2Nite, further reinforce this impression. The album opens with the three hit singles "Boogie 2Nite," "Shine," and "Don't Mess with My Man," all of which are versions of little known, previously very minor hits by Tweet, Luther Vandross, and Lucy Pearl respectively, so one might have thought they were all originals, unless one studies the lower regions of the singles charts. However, this was not the '70s, it was the late 2000s, and the dance music on Boogie 2Nite was one drum machine-led house track after another, all sounding as if they may have been bigger hits had Kylie Minogue recorded them, or even Madonna during her Confessions on a Dance Floor phase. There were in fact only 12 tracks on the album, the final three being remix versions of the first three hit singles. "He's a Winner" was the track that pinpointed the era exactly, a disco beat yes, but also electronic bleeps and synthesized repeated and echoed vocals. At a club, put the album on and leave the DJ box while the dancing goes on, but nearly 50 minutes of daytime listening in a living room is far too long and samey. ~ Sharon Mawer minimize