Every time a special compilation CD or DVD is scheduled for release, the eyes light up with excitement, anticipatingly counting down the days. Yet, every time, disappointment shortly comes after as this promise of totaldance is quite a misleading one. So the fairest way to review this disc is to tally up the great songs, and find a percentage of good tracks vs. bad tracks. That is how that score has been achieved – 16 great tracks out of 27. Sadly, Volume 2 suffers the same dreaded fate as Volume 1.

Screaming the score upwards are tracks from DJ Sammy, Tall Paul vs INXS, Fragma, The Superman Lovers, Love Inc and Ian Van Dahl, with equally stunning video clips accompanying the tracks. The most worthy mention on this disc is Delerium’s Silence, featuring the vocals of the talented Sarah McLachlan, with a nice edit of Sanctuary’s lengthy remix. Early on in the piece we have a track from Puretone – a track many of you will know, but credited to another name. Josh Abrams feat. Amiel, credited as Puretone, is in place with their chart-topper Addicted to Bass and saw the start of a promising career from Amiel Daemion. Kai Tracid’s 4 Just 1 Day is an energetic track with a clear story and funky video clip – a really nice example of this group’s work.

Australia’s dance duo Madison Avenue are in place with their hit Who The Hell Are You? with a cool, and slightly odd, nay queer, video clip. The song may not be their best, but the video clip’s alternative material is nice to see in a mainstream release. Jakatta feat. Seal are early on in the piece with the awesome track My Vision, used as part of Columbia Tristar’s 2003 press reel in early 2003. This is just an awesome track, and illustrates that both Jakatta and Seal are more than just one-hit wonders. One rather odd song is Interactive’s Forever Young. This track found its way into the clubs in late 2002, featuring on the UK release of the Ministry of Sound Annual 2003, yet was actually released in the early ‘90s. The track itself is reasonable, but not fantastic, and it makes you wonder why it was re-released.

Bringing the score down are tracks from the likes of the Scooter, Vengaboys, Bomfunk MCs, Alcazar, Warp Brother and the inevitably Sony Brooklyn Bounce. Tracks from some of these groups do rate quite high with some audiences, but the overplayed tracks from the Vengaboys, Bomfunk MCs and Alcazar are starting to wear a bit thin.

Overall, the compilation is promising, but with a score of six it’s still missing those points to make it really totaldance. For a total dance compilation you’ll need to include tracks from legends (and favourites) including BT and Hybrid. With 59% of the tracks favoured on this disc, that leaves 41% that could have been improved with more appropriate tracks to the mood and genre of the other clips.

Track listing...

The clips are presented in a single title, cut into individual chapters. The overall presentation is in a 1.33:1 aspect, with some clips framed at a widescreen aspect – well one of many widescreen aspects to be exact. Throw the standards book out the window and get ready to do your own thing! After watching a superb presentation on totaldance volume 1, the stakes were quite high, but this disc stooped to new lows, and for no apparent reason. The most noticeable and distracting problem occurs during chapter 19 when some lovely tracking marks can be seen along the bottom of the screen. Now the reason that this is inexcusable is because the clip itself is letterboxed in a widescreen aspect, with a black bar down the bottom which would have been easy to fix up with a simple solid black shape, mimicking a black bar, placed over the bottom of the clip during the editing process, covering up these hideous marks. This isn’t the only reminder of VHS – we also get rather questionable clarity during some clips, with minor compression artefacts visible during many of the slower fades between scenes. For a DVD presentation that is capable of a much higher quality than VHS these transfer issues really are unforgivable. At times the image is quite soft, and it's obvious to see which clips were sourced from tape, while at other times the image is razor sharp. On the plus side, colours are bright and vibrant, showing no sign of bleeding or posterisation, with deep and well-defined blacks providing a solid backing to the image.

With 100 minutes featured on a single layer, it would be stupid for us to get excited with the prospect of a 5.1 DD track. Well, bingo, because all we get is a DD 2.0 track, no surround-enhancements at all. For a compilation of video clips, things are peachy – it’s a big step up from the somewhat fuzzy reception that can occur over the airwaves when watching video clips on a Saturday morning. It’s a decent mix with some heavy bass and clear treble, so it’s hard to find any faults with that. A hint for those with Pro-Logic II capabilities – turn that baby on for a more enveloping mix, which sounds much better for a party, really exacerbating the potential of matrixed stereo soundtracks.

You’ve gotta love advertising, with a lovely Sony clip flogging how interactive Sony Music DVDs can be, with interviews, hidden features, subtitles, multiple angles and the like. Well that’s nice to know, but next time include some of these functions on these DVDs, rather than just telling us about them! Upon sticking this disc in, you get a bit of a trailer for the Absolute audio CDs but for a better mix, get Ministry of Sound any day. Each of the menus are thematically built on the cover art for this disc, and each page of the song selections, as well as the main page, features a different looping audio clip.

totaldance it ain’t, but Volume 2 does include some pretty cool clips to liven up your next party. Combined with Volume 1, these two volumes give a DVD's worth of great party tracks, and another DVD of coaster-worthy tracks. With some rather appalling artefacts on the video track, the quality of this transfer is well below the mark. The audio, however, is entirely serviceable, and this disc is great for just some chill out time – great music, great clips, nice eye candy and a decent presentation. It’s still not quite what the title is leading towards, but still it scored 4% better than volume 1 – give it a go at your next party!