Todd Edwards - Full On, Volume 1

At the turn of the century, Todd Edwards took a peek into a future for dance music we haven’t yet seen. Todd’s incredible cut ups and vocals that blessed Daft Punk’s Face to Face remains one of the best deep cuts from the robots, and after diving deeper into his catalogue I was enlightened with a style that goes even further into those futuristic sounds. On this DJ mix featuring 15 of the “finest garage cuts mixed & produced by Todd Edwards,” each blip of his own special brand of garage compliments the next, each track moving and flowing in sequence. Four-to-the-floor kicks, down-pitched shuffly wisps of hihats and deep synth basslines should not be taken lightly - these elements are almost just as signature to his style than the main characteristic he’s known for. It’s the microchopped sampling that gives it that “Todd” sound though: brief, finely cut-up micro slices of often-unrecognisable source material, almost-all with one longer vocal cut kicking off each bar that turns this compilation of slices into an instant ear worm. After repeated listens of this mix, I just can’t get so many of the vocal hooks out of my head: “your perfect love-ove-ove-ove…,” “the dREAM,” “PUSH IT (keep on puuushin) PUSH IT!!” One cut after the next, I’m in awe of how he was able to craft these songs with such complexity, and yet have every one of them be so groovy and brain-scratching. There’s an incredible video of Todd’s ‘1st Historic UK Show,’ where you see this man from New Jersey, pre-internet, discover in real-time the influence his records had over a completely different country. But I would argue, not only does this influence extend globally today, rare have we gotten an artist whose music sounds just as fresh as it did almost 30 years ago, building a future for dance music that was often-replicated but never captured the exact same feeling. A few weeks back, I asked the house-master himself, aerate, if he had any recommendations similar to Todd Edwards, to which he responded: “there aren’t many people that make shit like Todd out there.” Pretty much sums it all up.