Joe Claussell - Music Is...A Reason to Celebrate (CD)

All Music Guide

Accomplished compilation providers Barely Breaking Even hook up with Urban Theory, following their mixed albums from the likes of Masters at Work and Pete Rock with a double-CD set from Joe Claussell, label manager at the acclaimed Spiritual Life label as well as resident at New York's Sunday night session ~Body SOUL, a title that also counts François Kevorkian and Danny Krivit among its number, widely regarded as the spiritual successor to the legendary Larry Levan's ~Paradise Garage. This shimmering track list represents Claussell well, effortlessly slipping the likes of Sounds of Blackness and Monday Michiru into a selection of early influences represented across the two discs by the likes of Earth, Wind Fire, Louis Armstrong, and Syreeta's '70s Motown. Even the aforementioned Levan gets a mention, checked here in a remix of Imagination's "Changes."

- Kingsley Marshall, All Music Guide