I've noticed in a lot of dance music over the last few years, especially throughout europe, there has been a certain percussion sound and style that has made it's way into lots of electronica/electro/house stuff (call it whatever you want).
i've made a zip of five examples i've found (booka shade, james holden, nathan fake, eric prydz.)

http://torigovett.customer.netspace.net.au/examples.zip

although i normally don't write or listen this kind of sound i'm still interested to know what's usually involved in this feel? it's got the very shaker/hat drenched sound, going in and out of lots of constant tweaking of those percussion samples (the typical long decay/short decay chop up on the drum machine), and is it also something to do with the feel or swing that goes against the main beat or something? i'm not sure how to express it as i'm not very technical music wise but something about it tells me it isn't entirely straight 44.

obviously i'm not very good at explaining it so thats why i posted the samples.

any input here?

cheers, louis.