Dance dance revolution?

Basement Jaxx 

* Crazy Itch Radio * XL

Soulwax

* Nite Versions * Modular

Staying on the cutting edge of dance music is tough in the 21st century. The days when getting your mitts on the next Madonna remix early bestowed automatic cool are ... well, at least a generation ago. Now any hipster with the right MySpace friends and a fast connection can download and share all the hottest new jams--be they Estonian punk or Nigerian hip-hop--before you can say "free beer" 10 times fast.

So how can a DJ-producer type ensure that his or her latest holds up over the long haul? Judging from new full-lengths by Basement Jaxx and Soulwax, the formula breaks down into three components. Step 1: Ransack the entire pop music universe. Step 2: Apply the latest cutting-edge technology. Step 3: Add generous lashings of that little something extra (ingenuity) or flat-out craziness. Voile--feet shuffle, fists pump, minds reel.

When South London duo Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe (Basement Jaxx) first appeared in the mid '90s, one could safely call their tracks progressive house. But since their 1999 debut album Remedy the pair have vaulted ahead of the pack. The only consistent characteristic from track to track was the blow-the-roof-off energy driving all their productions. On 2003's Kish Kash they outfitted goth goddess Siouxsie Sioux with a new set of 21st-century fangs, and they made 'NSync second banana J.C. Chasez seem shockingly cool.

Once again, seemingly anything is fair game for their "New Age ghetto music" on Crazy Itch Radio. African children's chorus? Russian accordion? Fife and drum corps careening through Rio? Yes--and all on the same song ("Hey U"). When these eclectic impulses are anchored by what are fundamentally straight-up R&B jams, the results are magic: "Hush Boy" and "Smoke Bubbles" groove like mutant offerings from Clara or Kelis, but with sticky fingers running the controls instead of the sterile precision of go-to producers like the Neptunes. "Run 4 Cover" rants and stomps like the bratty little stepsister of Missy Elliott's "Pass That Dutch." Only when our heroes forget to plant a solid song idea--as on the all-fireworks, no-flame "Everybody"--do their antics veer into incoherence.

While Basement Jaxx scoured the globe for odd sounds, Dutch ensemble Soulwax cannibalize their own back catalog on Nite Sessions. Using their 2004 dance-rock opus Any Minute Now as the primary source material, they stretch and chop old tunes, plus a few new ones, into radically different configurations.

Putting fresh twists on old tunes is Soulwax's stock-in-trade. They were one of the early pioneers of the mash-up with their 2002 masterpiece As Heard on Radio Soulwax Part 2 under their alias 2 Many DJs. Now they are sought-after remixers for artists ranging from pop tart Kylie Minogue to underground stalwarts such as Felix Da Housecat. So even though the remix album is hardly a novel concept, it's hard to sustain the audience interest and do more than just compile a bunch of disparate singles; Nite Sessions is proof that Soulwax still meets the challenge.

"Compute" takes snippets of Blondie and Gary Glitter, strangulated robot vocals, an insidious video-game riff, and what sounds like a kitten trapped in a piano and gets them all to dance. Ditto "Krack," with its staccato Kraftwerk-like beats and wobbly tonality.

With pop-culture cycles coming faster and faster, it will probably only be a couple of years before DJ-producers start cannibalizing Basement Jaxx and Soulwax and club music implodes on itself; after all, you can only recycle something so many times before it completely breaks down. But for now, all this hyperreferential craziness makes for unfettered fun. And you don't have to be a daily PitchforkMedia.com reader to enjoy the result--just an open-minded music fan.