It's becoming ever so slightly predictable - the first month of the new year, and a new album to laud from a French duo which happens to be signed to Virgin Records. Just as Daft Punk's Homework and Air's Moon Safari went on to dominate the year in dance in 1997 and 1998 respectively, the work of Phillipe Zdar and Hubert Boombass as Cassius is sure to be still a hit come December. And why not?

1999 is a peach, an album which shows that house music still has the winning touch if you know where to go looking for it. Zdar and Boombass come to Cassius with a stylish pedigree. Previous releases individually and collectively as La Funk Mob, Motorbass and L'Homme Qui Valait Trois Millards have shown that they know how to construct a winning groove. Yet 1999 is a far more enticing and winning proposition than any of their previous endeavours. Perhaps it's the omnipresent funky glow or the positioning of every single track squarely at the dance floor, but this is an album which wants you to bust a move. Obvious, perhaps - but so many dance albums prefer to serve cerebral thrills and leave the floor-filling to some re-mixer to deliver. 1999 and the forthcoming second album from New York's Armand Van Helden will go a long way to changing that perception. From the recent Top 10 single Cassius '99 on, this is a splendid cut-and-paste collection of filtered disco mayhem. Exciting beats, cheeky rhythms and an intoxicating, giddy feeling that there is much more to come; you couldn't ask for a better start to the year.