VA

Your roommates and neighbors will have a twofold reaction to the strains of you blasting these initial releases of the HEAVYbreathing series. The first is that you have some willfully eclectic taste, running the gamut from exotica to blues to hip hop. The second is that said taste is not quite masking the high volume of whatever porno you are currently watching. This German compilation's unifying factor is that each selection features some sort of groan, moan, or gasp of le petite mort within every groove. That means some raunchy, horizontal soul: Little Esther Phillips purrs about "Ooh Midnight"; Tina Turner pants about "Doin' It" while Ike fingers the piano; Screamin' Jay Hawkins gnashes on "Bite It." DJ Qbert, Kool Keith, De La Soul, and Lil' Kim all swing by, and Chakachas' "Jungle Fever" gets sampled by 2 Live Crew. Plenty of bongos and congas fuel other mewls, as do prototype synthesizers (see White Noise and Sensuously Sinthesized on the first volume). The disc even includes Breathless star Jean Seberg getting, you know, breathless on "Hiasmina." But for every salacious exotica cut, lewd rock-steady single, or nasty funk number, there are some tedious ringers from current-day German no-names. Oddest of all are mood-killing liners that posit "why this male falsetto is so typical of black music" then note elsewhere: "It is so easy for Afro-American men to sing like this." Such steamy moments are thus tempered somewhat by a curatorial wank job. — Andy Beta