B ecause dance music and technology have been synonymous since at least disco, jumping back in history can feel like a pronounced act of nostalgia. Eras are delineated so strictly that if you listen closely, you can hear the years, whether in the live-percussive propulsion of the first wave of disco or in the room-throbbing analog synths of early '80s boogie or the giant-drummed mush of the mid-'80s or the post-house breaks of the mid-'90s.

Ministry of Sound's recent five-CD box set Live and Remastered is a trip back to the London club's early days (it opened its doors September 21, 1991 and this package commemorates its 20th anniversary). In retrospect, Ministry's youth seems modest – yes, it was always a giant converted bus garage with a massive sound system, but the sounds were gentler, more soothing than that which comes from the decks of its current residents like Michael Woods or any of the superstars who've blown through, like Tiësto or David Guetta. In 1991 Ministry was not yet an industry churning out genre-specific compilations and perfumes, and popular dance music was generally either from the U.S. or trying to sound like it. It's strange to say this about the soundtrack to a megaclub, but Live and Remastered sound almost quaint compared to the brighter, faster sounds of today.

Because of Simon Reynolds' book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, which came out earlier this year, it's a good time for nostalgia discourse. (Will we look back on 2011, remember all the nostalgia talk fondly and make our heads explode?) Some people caution against falling prey to nostalgia's charms because it makes for taste blinded by experience. That's fair, but ultimately it's not nostalgia that makes Live and Remastered worth hearing.

Each Live and Remastered mix comes from a big at or around his prime – Todd Terry, David Morales, Kenny Carpenter, Ministry of Sound founder/resident DJ Justin Berkmann and Paradise Garage legend Larry Levan. (Levan is better known for his disco and post-disco championing than for straight house sets like the one that appears here, and thus is something of a novelty.) They all hearken back to '91 and '92, when house songs were matter-of-factly soul songs, part of the fabric of contemporary R&B (Sounds of Blackness' "The Pressure, Pt. 1" appears twice, but the gospel stomper is so

"The nostalgia question gets a little trickier when one of dance music’s common practices is reaching back to the past."

alive that it could appear 20 times and wouldn't outstay its welcome). This was a time of vinyl hiss, tsking high hats, the steady crunch of vintage drum machines and would-be CeCe Penistons. There are moments that get late-night deep (especially during the sublime latter half of Carpenter's set), but these mixes are mostly driven by vocal near-hits and complete misses by the likes of Lidell Townsell ("Nu Nu"), Crystal Waters ("Makin' Happy") and Cookie Watkins ("I'm Attracted to You"). Some of these crossed over better than others, but none of them would make any kind of non-mixshow recurrent airplay lists today. They're suspended in amber, still packing the explosive plasticity of their era.

There is a kind of meta-obsession going on here, as snippets of well-known tracks of that time are worked in and looped for effect. Morales uses a mix of Inner City's "Pennies from Heaven" that emphasizes the original's wordless vocalizing and Paris Grey's wail of, "We need some love!" and he elsewhere samples the hilarious skit intro of Lil' Louis' "Club Lonely" immediately after playing a vocal-free remix of that track. These mixes are conversations. This is house music about house music and certain motifs at the time were too current to be a product of nostalgia -- they were common practices.

The nostalgia question gets a little trickier when one of dance music's common practices is reaching back to the past. There's tons of disco on Live and Remastered, whether it's overt (Todd Terry opens with his own "Hear the Music," released under his Gypsymen moniker, which heavily samples Machine's all-time classic "There But for the Grace of God Go I") or as subtle as a sampled horn stab that was probably a product of the Salsoul Orchestra, but is hard to place. But then, house music was always conversant with what came before it. When they inadvertently created a genre, Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy were cutting up old disco records. The 808/303-armed peers they inspired then attempted to recreate that '70s sound with some boxes instead of orchestras, and the effect was chilly, robotic and new.

Time's ability to expand and contract is a bizarre, intoxicating thing. Music has changed, you can still hear so many elements that have endured from the seamless presentation of songs from the DJs decks to that insistent cornerstone of house, its four-on-the-floor beat. When we talk about changes in disco-derived dance music, we're talking about changes in dynamics, styles and taste, which may seem major in the moment but are actually logical and steady. What if our definition of nostalgia is clouded by egocentrism that finds us being way too specific in our definition of now?

From our vantage point, 20 years seems like a long time ago. But there may come a time in the future when the leap from 1991 to 2011 seems not far at all, and it will make sense that we were still repeating ourselves, working things out and celebrating with our ears. These are still the good old days. Desperation and clinging do not reverberate through the tracks on Live and Remastered. Life does.

Rich Juzwiak is a writer and video editor whose work has appeared in the Village Voice, Jezebel, and on This American Life. He runs the pop culture blog fourfour.