LTJ Bukem has a notoriously faithful following, but sometimes you have to wonder if even they can keep up with the pace of releases Good Looking and assorted sub-labels are spreading around. It's the Bukem paradox: For one whose music fundamentally hasn't changed in years, the heaps of records suggest meaningful achievement. Strange thing is, the Progression Sessions, though pretty much interchangeable, are always worth a spin. You don't need all of them, but once every few years you somehow need a new Bukem set. Following last year's America Live, Bukem and his loyal MC Conrad present another live set, this time recorded at Tokyo's legendary Liquid Room. In general, Bukem's live recordings tend to be more interesting than his studio sets, simply because the somewhat clinical sound is injected with a bit of rawness and unpredictability, mainly through his trademark cross fading with the Amen break (a trick he probably can do with his eyes closed by now, yet it never fails to excite).

The Japan set builds up nicely with the motorik of Greenfly's G-Funk and Bukem's excellent remix of Herbie Hancock's Essence. Things get denser, the beats start to break with Nookie's Innerspace, and there are a couple of rewinds. Something of a plateau is reached with The Western remix and Makoto's floating Music Has Never Let Me Down, after which the record loses a bit of focus. There are moments of "little madness" when Bukem produces one of his peaks where breaks fold in and out to create an ecstatic density of sound, constrasting with Conrad who, perhaps self-consciously aware of being recorded, never hits one of his usual trances wherein he almost seems to speak in tongues. The overall sound remains the same, and consequently, The Western makes it painfully clear that the true moments of glory are a thing of the past, never to be recaptured again. Essentially the same thing can be said of this new Progression Sessions chapter: pleasurable, but nowhere near the standards set by Bukem's own Mixmag and Promised Land mixes.