About

Metro Area is one of dance music's truly essential LPs. Unlike many artists reissuing landmark albums, Metro Area—AKA Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani—haven't bulked out this 15th anniversary edition with remixes, alternate versions or demos. Weighing down their self-titled debut album with extra material would, after all, compromise one of its many standout qualities. Its 12 remastered tracks—which includes all tracks from both the UK and US versions—are models of economy, in which not a single note is wasted or out of place. Metro Area was compiled from tracks that first appeared on a series of EPs that began to emerge in 1999. Geist had set up his label, Environ, four years earlier, and he and Jesrani bonded over the older and slower strains of New York dance music more than the tribal and progressive dominated the city's clubs at the time. The album's reference points were disco, R&B and boogie, but, as Jesrani once said, the arrangements and mixing were "totally shaped by house and techno, so our stuff ended sounding like a mix of those things—kind of minimal, empty disco tracks."

The album's influence spread far and wide. It helped the '00s New York disco and punk-funk resurgence, spurred on by the likes of DFA Records. There are few nu-disco DJs who didn't play a Metro Area track, and few nu-disco producers who didn't try to imitate them. The album's '80s references also found favour in the electroclash scene, and the space in tracks like "Strut"—which makes the entrance of a hi-hat or handclap a major event—was echoed in minimal techno.

So what about another Metro Area LP? In 2010, Geist said it was "9/16ths" finished, but we've heard little about it since. Listening to how perfect Metro Area still sounds, it's hard to say how necessary another album may be. If this album proves anything, it's the value of giving people only as much as they really need. — (via Resident Advisor)

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Label: Environ
Format: 3 x Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Album, Reissue, Remastered, 15th Anniversary Edition
Country: US
Reissued: 2017 / Original Release: 2002
Genre: Electronic
Style: Deep House, Disco

File under: House / Electro / Techno
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