Various Artists: Digital Disco

A profoundly huge movement that once held America rapt with out-and-out dance music, disco has become a rich playground for aesthetes in recent years. The compilation circuit has been working overtime, tracing the style's roots to the string-swept Philly soul of the '70s and following its reach to the funky club underground of the '80s, and disco's mantric sizzle has become an integral part of today's hyped New York rock scene. While the genre goes through a full-scale critical rehabilitation, though, the most intriguing readings have trickled out from the miniaturized realm of minimal-techno. Assembled by the German label behind the scene-making Clicks & Cuts compilations, Digital Disco floats above nostalgic airs by distilling disco down to its essential rhythms and moods. The album's die-cut beats and hyper-polished production flirt with disorienting precision, but the best tracks amount to deep readings of the pathos and glee lurking in disco's palpitating heart. MRI's "Disco Discovery" wipes an equally haunted and heavenly synth smear across a sashaying beat pitched between a warm-up and a wind-down. Full of jumpy keyboard patches and carved-up strings, Astrobal's "Magic Lady (1040 Mix)" plays like an idolatrous love song sadly dipped in amber. The album's disco ties are pretty loose, branching into Data 80's juicy electro-house grooves and Sylk 130's flat cover of Nu Shooz's '80s pop classic "I Can't Wait." But the highlights strain disco through a refined filter and reconstitute its pulp as bitter candy. The best track, Luomo's "The Present Lover," spreads a devotional ode into the blurry dub distance, soaring into a disarming solo that pulls a spacey sine wave through scales like a gilded blues tune. Loaded with choice tracks by Decomposed Subsonic, Metro Area, Akufen (remixed by Herbert), and Swayzak, Digital Disco takes an era's worth of chubby dance-floor atmosphere and refits it to the size of a pinhead.