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Kirkkonummi ( ES ) - Finland
Website : http://alpha.libre.fm/user/jani
Joined : September 20, 2006
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Strong acidity here, especially on the opening side. I like it! Hard to pick a favourite on just a couple of listen-throughs, but overall I favor the earlier tracks and feel the quality somewhat lessens towards the end of the album.
I disagree with the previous reviewer about the drums; IMO goa needs beats that drill through your skull, should you ingest too much. However, I would have liked a bit more texture in the tracks, more layers of sound, concurrent melodies and/or basslines. Maybe this is what evokes in others a sense of misbalance between the drums and the rest: the 'rest' are slightly undermanned. ('Heroic Act', which I'm listening to right now, sounds like one of the better ones in this respect, with many different complex and varying themes fusing nicely together.)
More layers would also allow for more build-up, which is another aspect of good goa.
A comparatively well-produced album with nothing fancy or surprising.
What I was left to hope for was for one or some of the songs to stand out. I found I'd quickly listened the album through with nothing left echoing in my head, save for the soloist's voice. A practical consequence of this is that I'm unable to name a favorite track.
To the artists' defense I must say this genre is far from being my usual cup of tea, and stress the fact that I don't know enough Spanish to understand the lyrics.
This is not techno, trance or jungle, but the tracks that don't even try to be stand pretty good on their own. I liked 'Tristesse' and 'Aquaria' the best, and I too liked the oriental elements in 'Pursuit in Istanbul', although on the whole that track too fell victim to the attempt of mixing with the rougher genres, and failing to impress at that.
Had this been a shorter album with only the unpretentiously electro-ambient tracks, I'd have rated it higher. Alas, the rating is given for the entire album, making me rate it a 6.
A cross between Boards of Canada and Daft Punk with a catchy, funky soundscape and a monotonously repeating theme. I'm not sure if was intentional, but at times it also sounded a bit clipped, which is the part I didn't like.
The album started out sounding a bit dated to me, but then I adjusted my listening to retro-mode, and found myself enjoying the classic synthesizer soundscapes. It was only half-way through when I glimpsed at the notes, and realized that the album actually *is* from the 1980s! What a blast from the past.
Definitely worth checking out, if you also like the band's influences (the likes of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis).
There's potential here, but unfortunately it all drowns under the godawful pasted-on vocal samples. 'San Peter Party' is the only one where they blend at least half-decently in with the rest of the texture. The textures themselves aren't that bad (at least to my non-producer ears), and I might have rated the album a 7, maybe even an 8, had it been purely instrumental.
Some classic, rich synthesizer sounds here, and not just slightly reminiscent of works by pioneers such as Kraftwerk. Some way to go until fully comparable to such big names, but I'm definitely keeping my ear out for more from this artist.
All the elements are there, and you can tell a lot of time has been spent fusing them together. What I found lacking was some kind of kick, soul, a hook: something in each of the tracks to stand out and stay with you. As it is, they'd probably work best as background for a fast-paced game and not so much as focus for intensive listening. Incidentally, the theming also works for such purpose, though a single theme throughout an album is always pleasing IMO, whatever the purpose.
![Chase Records - Chase 020 - V/A - [Un]reachable Canopy](http://imgjam.com/albums/s46/46425/covers/1.100.jpg)
On the average a good album, although the goodness of individual tunes varies remarkedly depending on which particular niche genres you happen to like and not. But the sheer size of the work is enough to guarantee there are some excellent tracks for just about anybody's taste (well, at least for anybody with a taste for rough electronica), as well as some crappy ones.
My favorites were Moloch 11811's Blut Fur Baal Zebub and the definite overall favorite, Hypnozyl's DPP, which I found myself listening to over and over again.
Oh, and a -1 for the apparent loudness war between the tracks. The further down the tracklist you get, the more you'll find yourself adjusting the volume which is either way too loud or way too quiet.
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