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Speedsound recordings are starting to be synonymous with professional, well-crafted trance for me, and i daresay for a few others on Jamendo; 'Never Stop My Mind" is one of the crowd of decent albums they've collected, with production values just as high.
it feels a little more minimal at times than the genre standard, and often a little harder, which you'll appreciate if you miss industrial dance. the flow is excellent - check the first track, 'Mechanical Flaw', for a taste of that coupled with some interesting use of dance rhythm. you could dance to the entire set through pretty easily - 'Hard Mode' and the more mechanical 'Energetic Sequence' in particular i don't think i sat down once for - the vocals on 'Never Stop My Mind!" are a little disappointing, but don't let that stop you.
the bonus track, 'Sex Style', is an impressive live demo, which is what you should use this set for - take it outside and make a crowd bounce.
Lepht
there's a pervasive sentiment outside the electro community, and often within it, that all trance sounds the same. psytrance is no exception, and although 'Gravitational Survival' is a set that does little to dispel the myth, it's the perfect primer for those who haven't heard much of the genre. powerful and liquid, the rich river of intertwined layers that defines it is a constant presence through the album, not just within but between tracks. it's all too easy to listen to the entire thing in one go.
the quality of the sound is astounding, and the professionalism shows not just in the well-crafted and balanced tracks but also in the fact that they all have a minute or so of 'header' and 'footer', making them ideal for integrating straight into your own DJ sets or into each other as a run, something i'd be happy to do for a crowd. there are some minor fuckups - the tracks are pretty similar sometimes, to the point where i'd say they probably vary more within themselves than from track to track, and they all end on the same echo, which gets on my nipples, as did the "disco!" sample on 'Body Music' and the piano notes that start from 2:00 on the otherwise excellent 'Distant Powers'. my one major problem with the set is 'Presence of Gaia'; the 90s called - they want their drum sequences back. i suspect the collaborator on that track, Soul Earth, is the culprit.
problem track aside, the rest of the set is energetic and smooth, a real pleasure to listen to. there are cute samples on 'Stereo Chair' and 'Recalled' in particular that enhance the experience, and it's not as same-old as it could be - some tracks ('Krystaline', 'Body Music') are harder, often combined with a space feel that makes for an interesting hybrid, whereas others are photonic and ethereal, like 'Distant Powers' and the superb 'Lek Trek'. there are little touches of individualism scattered throughout, too - the eastern melody and the rippled backbeat at 4:00 on 'Body Music' and the uncanny valley effect that comes from the syncopated rhythms of 'Half the Acid', or the sieved, sum-of-the-parts aura that makes 'Jangada' what 'Presence of Gaia' was seemingly trying to be. it's a fine little album.
all said, i'd label this a refined but standard trance album, a Psytrance 101 that will get any crowd swaying in unison or soothe you into your work any night. nice one.
Lepht
first thing i noticed about these tracks is they're kinda short; i thought 'Fuego' was the intro until i got further in. it's a very MIDI-heavy album, one that could do with more layering in places - 'Fuego' in particular suffers from this, and 'Hard Stuff', where the main melody loop sounds a little uncooked when left to play by itself.
in spite of that sort of raw, needs-a-little-more-editing quality, there's a few really sweet technique moments in there. 'Fuego' has its way with the left and right sound channels in the same manner as a seasoned DJ, and the factory backbeats on 'She Master' are something really different; it reminds me of Ministry, that junkyard-music appeal that first drew me to industrial and that seemed to die out about a decade ago. equally, the beepy little loops on 'Hope' and 'Far From Home' are impressively contrasted with the heavy guitar samples, a nice effect; 'Far From Home' in particular has a tempo contrast between the drum tracks and synths that makes you sit back and appreciate the work that's gone in, like the dark trance intro to 'Monster'.
the real star is the vocals. the lyrics have a good old-school industrial quality to them with a decent rhythm, and the style reminds me of Dupont or Massiv in Mensch - there's an accomplished, tuneful metal growl to it and a filthy undercurrent to the lyrics that i didn't realise i missed ('She Master' in particular has a dom-love scenario that really takes me back). 'Wilder Wind' is interesting - the singer is Deutsch, and the vocals sound that much better in their native language; i'd like to see a branch in that direction.
go ahead and put it on the jukebox, ladies. ignore the flaws and listen to the voice.
nicely mixed, nicely put-together tracks from Nexus. whilst not good enough quality for a real establishment, Love Technology is perfect for live parties and outdoor raves, especially tracks like 'Live on Risa' and 'V-Raven', whose cute vocals and hooky backbeat make it a pretty damn good track. all in all, not bad; add this one to your home collection, people.
L
but: first thing i noticed about this album is the total lack of gimmicks. no All Your Base samples, no 90s rap, nothing; just pure, classic synth technique with a flow like mercury and a sound that made me loop it twice. the production is excellent, the quality of the mix is eminently professional - i'd want to use this to get any club going, but i'd also listen to it in the bath, if you take my meaning. Synthetic Sinergy is a talented artist who can even use old-school tape slowdown-speedups and Daft Punk-esque robot voices without sounding stupid, and Waves of Energy is an album with some seriously consummate flair that i'd recommend to anyone with a liking for nice, deep beats, complex patterns and the good new days of trance.
L
well, this isn't a bad album per se; it just embodies all the cliches about dance and club tracks that make Ministry of Sound compilations sound like fifty repetitions of the same female singer coupled with seventy-eight thousand of the same backing loop. there are some interesting melodies in there - the trance track 'Fantasy4You' has some good beats - it's just that you gotta go truffle-hunting for them amidst standard, heard-it-before samey-samies and terrifying samples like the voice from 'Happiness'. good for background noise, bad for your club showcase.
L
first up, Klass, i'm sorry it took me so damn long to review this album. it wasn't because of the quality, believe me. second, review:
if you've never heard DJ Klass before, you'd be forgiven for going through the rest of the past albums and getting frustrated once you'd heard this one - it's a pretty strong change of direction, and it does show in comparison to the work he's done in the past. this is much more of a varied album, to the point that some of the tracks sound like they were written lightyears apart from each other - A Child's Art has all the mood swings of your average three-year-old, from the mass effect of the sampletacular Viva La Revolution to the quietly powerful Il Possedait Un Galerie Sur Paris. in this case, that's not a bad thing either - the range gives you an idea of just how versatile DJ Klass really is, more so than previous EPs, and showcases new elements like the use of the bongos and his increasingly artistic use of related samples; check the track Amy Lee to see some pretty damn cool things done with just a bassbeat, a Chinese melody and the natural rhythms of the human voice.
speaking of samples, though, watch out - some of the children's speech ones are a little on the creepy side. that's my sole complaint; A Child's Art even makes its porn music sound good.
L
i realise you gotta be lenient with quality here, so i generally wouldn't say this, but i can't help myself - White Obscurity would have gotten a 9 outta me if it had been composed with decent studio instruments and not done on MIDI ones. i know, people don't have access to them, but seriously - the components of the music are pretty cool, and they're crying out for a decent studio mixing to make them really shine.
i can also see where mighty_winny is coming from here - the "electro" label isn't as appropriate as "techno", seeing as this wouldn't be at all out of place in a club if it was properly mixed. it's a shame, cause Habitbol definitely does have talent - the album just needs a spit'n'polish.
Lepht
whoa. this is completely different to the other Binary Mind stuff - it isn't an electro album, it's an audial travelogue. (see the description of the album for what i'm talking about.) for this, i have to admire it: i like unusual album concepts, and albums that hang together well enough to sound like a synthesis of ideas rather than a random collection of tracks, and Bloody Mary does that.
but damn, is the music ever weird. the massive gulf between this and, say, the Binary Mind CD1&2 is that the collaborators on this album seem to have a completely different style to the artist themselves, so i'm hearing all these harpsichord-esque synths and Argentinian folk melodies and shit and to be honest, i'm just weirded out. it's really not something you'd play for other people to dance to, and it's not something i personally would be able to listen to again. i guess if you like folk and electronica, this'd be your bag, but it's not exactly Gogol Bordello and i'd be lying if i said it would go down well with the usual denizens of either genre.
that said, it does have a very nice album cover.
Lepht
i don't got a lot of time, but i don't mind this album. it's technically excellent, and the music is good ambient trance with a sort of new-age, meditation-music feel given to it by the use of slo-mo drawn-out bass and bell-type overtones. it's pretty classic oldschool chillout: give it a knock if you liked the 90s school of whale-music and Tibetan bells.
Lepht
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