Carl Cox

Carl Cox's funky techno and hard-hitting house is as big and gregarious as he is, which may explain why his muscular music has earned him legions of fans worldwide. The British jock has been repeatedly crowned "World's Best DJ" in a career that's spanned decades: He put the bang in Brixton's acid-house explosion and has incited jump-up fervor at many a "Summer of Love" massive. It was at a 1988 Sunrise rave outside London that Cox hooked up a third turntable and his signature sound, earning him the moniker "3 Deck Wizard" and an album deal with Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto label. But while Cox's music crossed into the mainstream -- his 1992 "Does It Feel Good to You" broke the Top 40 -- he spent the rest of the decade mining a more underground sound geared at jacking sweaty dance floors.

The 1995 F.A.C.T. ("Future Alliance of Communication and Technology") mix sold a stunning quarter million copies, and its followup, 1997's F.A.C.T. 2, alerted Americans to how tremendous in scope Cox's techno triptych could be. Obliterating popular tracks by dance dons Fatboy Slim, Cajmere, and Underworld, F.A.C.T. 2 churns funk, house, tribal, breaks, and beyond into an unyielding techno tirade. The turntable trickery continues on The Sound of Ultimate B.A.S.E. Drawing upon his U.K. club night of the same name, it's an ass-shaking assault of dark, mutant house, and the clever changeups on tracks like Freq.'s "Xirtam 2" cut furiously before pummeling the listener with aggressive beats and basslines. Soon after, Cox released his second artist album, Phuture 2000, a ho-hum hodgepodge of Latin flava, patois rap, and jungle fury that spawned a couple of forgettable hits. Recorded live at Chicago's Crobar club, you can't help but wish you were hearing Mixed Live's top-of-the-hour techno and progressive house on a thumping Phazon sound system. 2nd Session fares better on home stereos: Recorded in Detroit on the Area2 tour, a frisky Cox digs heavily from his own Intec label, but the results are surprisingly eclectic and, in typical Cox fashion, unrelenting. It's a far superior sound for him: Coming from big, bad Cox, the mediocre house of Global -- released the same year -- sounds plain wimpy. (CARLA SPARTOS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide