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If you were a fan of Franz & Shape’s last 12”, ‘This Is The Way’ and their appearance on the Compilation EP you’ve been looking forward to getting hold of ‘Maximum Joy’. Synths were made for this type of industrial electro house throb while Dirk da Davo provides the moody vocal.

I particularly liked the dub of ‘This Is The Way’ and there’s a dub version on this release. Once again, it beats the vocal version for me but I think a few more traditional dub EFX would have helped.

Talking of dub, Yuksek is a new star of French electro and his remix could have been a dub remix as it loses the “Maximum Joy” chant and replaced it with “You don’t need words”. It gets increasingly electro sci-fi laser gun battle towards the end but the stand-out track on the EP at the moment is the remix by the Italian Francesco de Bellis.

This one seems to get the best out the lot and mixing in some old skool house with the Depeche Mode influence and some bangin’ electro percussion.

I plan to find out more about Franz and Shape as their album Acceleration is due out soon and Relish have got some a couple of seriously heavy compilations out by DJ Hell and head honcho Headman around the corner. Stay tuned as they say.

Reviewed: Franz & Shape feat. Dirk da Davo — Maximum Joy (Relish) Cat No. 82876869151 Release Date: 2006
A1. Maximum Joy (Original) (4:52)
A2. Maximum Joy (Dub) (5:28)
B1. Maximum Joy (Yuksek RMX) (5:08)
B2. Maximum Joy (Francisco RMX) (5:14)

Links:
www.myspace.com/franzandshape
www.franzandshape.com
www.yuksek.org
www.myspace.com/yuksek
‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ - the TV Series: ‘Maximum’ Joy Merryweather