On his first commercially available mix album, the Hacker spins the same sort of nocturnal electro-techno that he made his name with as a producer, most notably as half of the duo Miss Kittin the Hacker (Frank Sinatra). This alone makes the album, The Hacker A.N.D. N.O.W..., worthwhile for those who can't get enough of this decidedly European, '80s-throwback style of dance music. The Hacker goes a step further, however, actually dropping in a few tracks from the '80s to go along with all the '80s-styled 2004-2006 productions on hand. Those few old-school tracks are classics and undoubtedly high points here: Liaisons Dangereuses' Los Ninos del Parque (1981), Model 500's Techno Music (1988), and Front 242's No Shuffle (1985). These tracks mix well within this set, which most notably also features a pair of top-shelf International Deejay Gigolo releases (Kiko Gino's Oddyssey and Mount Sims' Restless) and productions by Ellen Allien (Brain Is Lost), Perspects (Strap), and the Hacker himself (FleshBone). The set was mixed with "no computer, no editing," though it sounds as though it could have been -- very smoothly mixed, without any distracting rough patches. The Hacker A.N.D. N.O.W... is indeed a welcome release from the man otherwise known as Michel Amato, in conjunction with the French label Uncivilized World. Without the old-school additions, it would simply be an impressive mix of contemporary electro-techno; with those few classics slotted in as they are, however, the stock of The Hacker A.N.D. N.O.W... is raised to the level of one of the more outstanding techno mixes of 2006, for the way it links the present to the past without seeming like a show-and-tell history project. ~ Jason Birchmeier, Rovi