"Veering 180 degrees from Aju's spacious, laid-back original, Luciano's 'Likuid' mix opens with a cut-up voice and percussion wig-out before submitting to a murderous bass thump that drives the track. Layers of his trademark percussion keep things moving along until 5:30, when a hammering synth riff is introduced and, by the time the jazzy keyboard solo hits a few minutes later, I had to check my pants for wetness."
-- Todd Hutlock

"Whereas Sam Shackleton's original cut was like dubstep's Tibetan Book of the Dead, Monolake member T++ sets sail for more Stygian domains with his Necronomicon-like remix. The flickering snares suggest panic, whereas the fractured rhythms weigh heavily over the still, black drones like Charon's oars beating on the waters of Hades, as the cavernous ebbs and flows seem to take over your ears and soul."
-- Chris Mann

"Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts take on 'Mogane' is a radical one, totally gutting the original and creating a boompty bouncer that owes as much to early acid house as it does to modern techno music. A pumping Chicago bassline grooves along to deep stabbing synths and hat-heavy percussion, and is sure to find favour with DJs straddling the line between deep house and more jacking fare."
-- Richard Carnes

"Modern Love's Andy Stott distils the thick atmosphere of Delay's original with his trademark metallic reductions and hi-hat/kick propulsion, and with a super smooth bassline adds swing and funk. The dark washes of the original now sit behind a sharp foreground that's dance floor friendly yet still deep and detailed enough for headphones. A wonderful combination of two very different, but complementary sound palettes."
-- Janet Leyton-Grant

"A desolate vision of armour-clad fiends marching across a techno landscape of relentless snares, hissing fissures of steam and acid-burn synths. An apocalyptic siren signifies the true beginning of the track and potentially the end of the world, while Danton Eeprom's ominous vocal creates an unassailable sense of impending metallic doom. Immense, formidable and not for the faint of heart."
-- Greg Sawyer

"Luciano's take on Inner City's 'Good Love' works Paris Grey's vocals in layers over a stripped down groove that sizzles along over a lightly acidic one-note riff and chattering Cadenza-style percussion. Neatly summarizing Luciano's recent turn toward deeper house sounds, 'Good Love' fuses Saunderson's soulful techno with the Chilean School of Minimalism for one of the highlights of 2008, as well as the History Elevate series."
-- Todd Hutlock

"Brun's vocals are delicate—seemingly ready to wither away as soon as they emerge from her mouth. Innervisions label head Dixon takes advantage in his edit of Schwarz's mix, drawing out the intro for 90 seconds before dropping the vocal. He maintains the languid pacing throughout, adding a kick drum here, the interlocking synth lines there and then ties it all up with a sedate string-laden breakdown."
-- Todd L. Burns

"Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia's 'Dead Souls' was a rich and emotional pop-house track, but Radio Slave wanted his remix to take the song closer to its title's dead heart. Edwards doubles up the length, jacks up the kick drum, and strips away the jangled guitars to deliver a bleepy and hollow minimal marathon that voids any intonation in Caro and Garcia's voices, so that dead souls were themselves singing the lyrics."
-- Dimitri Nasrallah

"Martyn takes TRG's sombre but hard-edged original and turns it into a melancholic but hopeful garage cum dubstep beauty. The vocals have been detuned; they sit lower in the mix and build a wistful atmosphere over the Detroit-sounding pads, a broken beat-esque drum workout and a driving but warm bassline. The angry and painful post break-up heart of the original is in effect turned into the sexy and lustful yearning of unreciprocated love."
-- Karl Tryggvason

"Cynics might see Moodymann's remix of 'Deepest America' as Kenny Dixon Jr's statement on European house music. Riding along an infectiously percussive shuffle, countless sampled disco loops are layered around a yearning gospel vocal ('Music! Music! Ain't no soul no more!'), before a pulsating space-age arpeggio flies in out of nowhere to throb you into submission. It's quite a journey for a seven-minute house record—and one that's executed perfectly by Dixon."
-- Richard Carnes

"Focusing on the guitar lick, DJ Koze reimagines 'Minimal' as gently swelling disco reminiscent of Modjo's 'Lady.' This track has that 'iron fist in a velvet glove' thing going on—the sounds and style are smooth but with a restrained power and a constant escalation of tension that's likely to end up with people being surprised at how hard they've been dancing."
-- Jacob Wright

"DJ Koze's epic re-imagining of 'Mango' takes elements from a completely different song ('A Fortune Cookie Symphony'), house music (the unyielding kick that only takes 120 seconds to appear) and outer space (just about everything else). It's less remix than it is jumping-off point, as though Koze came into the studio and set out to forget everything he knew about dance floor dynamics. God bless him."
-- Todd L. Burns

"Promos of 'Blind' in its original form appeared early enough for it to feature in DJ sets last NYE. But Knuckles' utterly infectious, extended take took the record to an entirely new level, ensuring it became one of 2008's most enduring club anthems. Though incongruous initially, Antony Hegarty's soaring vocals, that nagging trumpet line and a bassline warm enough to double as a duvet all combine to devastating effect."
-- Dave Stenton

"I hate to say it, but it's embarrassing how much better the Moritz remix is compared to the original. Where the original sounds like a hurried attempt at a current trend, Oswald's has all the time in the world. Like an exercise in deep, meditative breathing, it unfolds into as much space as it needs, holds it for as long as it wants and then lets it go in a wonderful ambient fade-out."
-- Peter Chambers