What's most intriguing about the obscurities and classics on this compilation of off-the-beaten-track, turn-of-the-’80s dance music is their diversity. In an age when musical subcultures that were mere footnotes in their day are available at a flick of the mouse, the once-unfathomable New York punk-salsa of Konk and skronk-disco of James Chance, and Delta 5's likeminded all-girl Leeds art-student punk-funk, might strike a few cranky collectors as over-exposed oldies by now; the Eight-Mile-as-Autobahn innovations of A Number of Names'Detroit techno precursor “Sharevari” (heard here in its instrumental mix) might conceivably draw a shrug from jaded rave historians as well.

But every one of those tracks is an essential milestone even dabblers should hear, and this sampler's less frequently heard highlights — Vivien Goldman's bittersweet Brit-bohemian laundry love story, Sprockety German-Spanish and Belgian-Italo crossovers from Liaisons Dangereuses and Kazino, fusion/prog/electro experiments from Isotope and Material — map out an omnivorous, geographically spread-out scene whose pretensions never come off humorless. Add in plenty of naively rigid British rapping and a couple high-register kiddie voices dueting with low-register robots, and it's no wonder the liner notes reveal that several of these rhythm-obsessed oddities became hits on actual non-new-wave dancefloors.