Week Two of Kyle Selects

Riton & Kah-Lo - Fake ID

Henry Smithson's career in dance music began in 1990s dance culture, and the long trips to the Renaissance raves prompting him to launch his own promotions closer to his home in Newcastle. The success of the club spawned the Switch record label, whose releases eventually made the record bag of Manchester hip-hop patriarch Mark Rae, who subsequently offered Smithson a job at his Fat City record shop in Manchester and an outlet for his solo material as Riton (French slang for Henry) to Rae's accomplished Grand Central imprint. Although at first glance the brew of soul, R&B, and house of the resultant debut long-player Beats du Jour seemed some distance from his contemporaries at the label, Smithson's consistently growling low end, and Funkadelic keys provided the all-important link to hip-hop.

Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You (Bibi & Dim's Anthem from Paris)

Compared to his cohorts in the new wave of French dance music, Dimitri From Paris looks much farther afield for his influences. While both AIR and Daft Punk make much of their affection for the music of the 1970s (prog and disco, respectively), Monsieur Dimitri's inspiration comes from the Continental jet-setting faux-jazz of the 1950s and early 1960s (exemplified by Dick Hyman, John Barry and Martin Denny), though the whole is updated by his long years of experience as a house DJ.