- With the Traxbox compilation rounding up Trax Records' back catalogue and Terry Farley's gargantuan overview of the acid house era (Acid Rain) released recently, it's happy days for anyone looking for a ready-made collection of early house classics—if less so for anyone who's spent years assembling one themselves. But even the biggest house anorak would probably have some holes in their collection where Sunset Records is concerned. That's not due to the rarity of its music, but rather because, compared to the likes of Trax and DJ International, Sunset seems to have been overlooked in Chicago's house music history.
Reading the extensive liner notes of Kill Yourself Dancing: The Story Of Sunset Records 1985-1989, you start to feel like you've paid more for this compilation than any of the people involved—from A&R scouts Matt Warren and Miguel Garcia to artists like White Night and Ben Mays—made from the label itself. But while those stories of dodgy distributors and industry swindling may be depressingly familiar, the music here is anything but. Sunset Records started out playing disco, funk and salsa well before the emergence of house, and Kill Yourself Dancing has the kind of eclectic vibe you imagine prevailed at the New York block parties where hip-hop was born. It offers a sense of what house music's earliest ideas sounded like before they became cliché. The original "Face The Music" is all chiming riffs and uplifting vocals over jacking beats, while White Knight's "It Could Be Acid" is as much a textbook definition of acid house as Phuture's "Acid Trax."
Admittedly not everything here is so interesting—there are some rudimentary beat tracks—and one compilation alone probably isn't enough to restore Sunset Records to their rightful place in house music lore. But tracks like Kasja's proto-Balearic "Try Try Again" belong in the sets of any decent house DJ, and Kill Yourself Dancing deserves the ear of anyone with more than a passing interest in why house music sounds the way it does.
Tracklist01. Razz - Kill Yourself Dancing
02. Ben Mays - Lover Man (Lover Man)
03. White Knight - It Could Be Acid
04. Boom Boom & Master Plan - Face The Music (Dub Mix)
05. Modern Mechanical Music - Persia
06. Master Plan - Electric Baile (Commercial Mix)
07. Hex Complexx - I Want You (The Transcontinental Mix)
08. Matt Warren - Rock The Nation (Kenny Jason Remix)