Around the turn of the millennium, some of the most exciting developments in dance music came from abandoning futurism in favor of a fond glance backward, plundering the forgotten riches of leftfield dance music of yore. The UK’s Chicken Lips were at the forefront of that movement, and on their 2003 DJ-Kicks, the group—represented here by Andy Meecham, Dean Meredith, and Steve Kotey—shows off its crate-digging skills. An early stretch of the set traverses rare funk-punk from Colourbox—the closest that 4AD ever came to dance music in the '80s—and unhinged reggae from Nina Hagen, complete with operatic squeals and even yodeling, before blasting off via Lindstrøm’s Scandinavian space disco. Further on, Larry Levan’s edit of Gwen Guthrie’s “Seventh Heaven” adds some iconic disco to the mix, but not before the Lips detour through Jamaica via Carl Craig’s now-classic remix of The Congos’ “Congo Man”; a few tracks later, Rhythm & Sound pick up the reggae pulse, this time filtered through Berlin dub techno. It’s precisely these sorts of exchanges that make Chicken Lips’ DJ-Kicks such an eye-opening set: It’s a thrilling reminder that dance music’s a living thing, even when it’s taking sustenance from the past.