Pound Boys

As documented in these pages, Pound Boys Greg Diehl and Craig Christenson, better known as DJ Dealer and DJ Craig C, have gone their separate ways. Fortunately, they left behind this generous collection -- three discs' worth of house improvements that provide a convenient survey of dance music in Denver and beyond during the past decade-plus.

The set skimps on historical information, reducing the Boys' career to just four paragraphs of liner info, and it doesn't include high-profile remixes done for the likes of Mary J. Blige and Ashanti. Nonetheless, the collection offers so luxuriant a sampling of their sonic achievements that carping seems beside the point. Originals such as the Christenson-penned "Back to Philly," with its wonderfully insistent keyboard groove, share plastic with the likes of "Jack It Up," which pits the Boys against the Martello Brothers, and "A Lovely Day," a reinterpretation of the Bill Withers chestnut cut long before "Sunshine," the recent Twista/Anthony Hamilton update of the tune. Dealer and Craig C provide beats aplenty here, but seldom at the expense of soulfulness. Tales, they win.