This awkwardly titled DJ mix exists as a marketing tool upon which most of you would justifiably loathe dropping $12 dollars. We're existentially opposed to such sneaky practices, right? What just about saves Various02: Dancemusic: Modernlife from the gullet of my local landfill is the higher-than-average quality of tunes that DJ Geoffe (a cutie pulled from the V2 intern pool, no doubt) has mixed together.

Sensing that people might not be thrilled about paying full-price for a label sampler, Geoffe's bosses have insisted that rather than pulling album tracks from his crates, he go round to the storage room and find more "exclusive" material. Nonetheless, anyone who's paid attention to dance music this year will already have more than half of this disc already. But for those of you out there in Godspeedsville, who have tried in vain to escape from the walls of cranky sound that border that grainy Super 8 city, I'll run it down.

The members of the Montpellier collective, Rinôçérôse, offer their homage to Ionesco, entitled "Sublimior," during the first three seconds of which a wanky guitar solo is terminated with super-aggressive prejudice, and supplanted by flutey tech-house of the highest order. Of course, the Richard Dawkins' fans amongst you will recognize this extinction of the dinosaurian guitar as a momentous leap up the face of Mount Improbable, while you social conservatives will denounce that same maneuver as pernicious affirmative action. Only those who tread the median way will skim lightly across the floor and attract many, many potential mates.

The mysterious Michael Moog unties the confused mess that is the Jungle Brothers' bafflingly ubiquitously licensed "Freakin' You" and reassembles the limp pop-rap ganglia as an anthem for house heads who adore Larry Blackmon for more than his shiny red cod-piece and any hi-hat that takes them back to the hairspray-sampling sounds of S'Express's "Theme."

Then comes the true treat! Master at work, Kenny Dope Gonzales, bounces from another plaudit for his funk and hip-hop sets, and sets down nine minutes' worth of bonus beats. Crammed into its lengthy duration, you'll hear trace elements of Alex Gopher's Lady Day-worshipping "The Child." To say that Dope has done it again is rather like being bowled over by the fact that the sun has miraculously risen this morning. Only flat-earth proponents could be astounded that Gonzalez has created yet another killer remix and ensured that the weak (in this case, Monsieur Gopher) will survive and garner praise that would otherwise never even pass within a parsec of him.

Dope takes a suburban Goddess-bothering drum circle, shakes the shamanic long-hair out of their armpits, gives them a crash-course on being utterly funky, and drops in a few Billie Holiday samples. Sounds simple? Well, in essence it is, but it sure knocks the fussy-jazzy spots off most deep house records. Turn it loose at a party and wow yourself, as well as your jitterless revelers.

After those bonus beats, we have to wait through another sack-grabber. Once again DJ Geoffe's flow dips deeply into dullness for Only Paradise's "You Got the Way" and Raffen's "Undertone": both pretend to the glory of tech-house, but with the allure of melamine flatware. Nor do Toronto's Stickmen provide us with any reason to care about their grimace-inducing recast of Aphrodite's rework of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze." But Geoffe isn't below redeeming himself. After three managerially mandated duds, he finally drops Ian Pooley's brilliant "1000 Degrees (And Rising)."

Now that we've got through the label's charity cases, Geoffe brings out the label's moneymakers. Underworld are represented by Dave Clarke's filthy-as-fuck remix of "King of Snake," which is immediately followed by Futureshock's evergreen tribalistic take on Moby's "Porcelain." It's a pity V2 couldn't come up with exclusive mixes of these two. That mix of "Porcelain" is just everywhere-- even Latvian polka compilations have copped it in order to shift some units. It's a fantastic mix, no question, but it's downright unavoidable.

Less widely distributed, former Spooky member and Sasha-enabler Charlie May closes the compilation with his squelchy, echoey, and really quite surpassingly good mix of Mandalay's "Deep Love." May has left in the melodramatic crashy pauses and the ethereal vocal, but with discretion, he's turned an insipidly Gorecki-worshiping studio outfit into an excessively trend-bucking trance act. Which is bloody annoying, seeing as how I have an existential dread of trance.

As a marketing exercise, Various02: Dancemusic: Modernlife is misguided, since anyone who genuinely cares will already have the good stuff. As a DJ set, Geoffe holds his own; only the segue way from the Ian Pooley track to Underworld's "King of Snake" is disruptive. And of course, I must give 'nuff respect to Geoff for mixing this disc live from actual vinyl and not pasting digital files together like all the coked-up fucks Mixmag fellates monthly. But that's no reason to shell out for this entirely promotional tool over, say, Tobias Schmidt's Destroy. Consumer advisory over.

-Paul Cooper