February / March 1999

The Rob Lo fidelity experience...
Rob Lo reviews some new recordings.

Nothing much to get excited about so far this year, which is one reason I've spent more time listening to Bob Crewe's 'Barbarella' soundtrack (highly recommended), Peter Thomas, and Miles at Filmore East than anything with '1999' printed on the sleeve. I've had Cristian Vogel's album, 'Busca Invisibles' (Tresor) since late last year, though, and it gives me hope for The Future. Can't name check any tracks because my (white) promo has a listing which appears to be wrong, but it's bulging with ideas, angles, raucous thumping, psychotic twists and turns. It's all warped, often nasty, frequently surprising, and sounds like Vogel won in his battle to beat machinery into submission whilst taking a chain saw to the shackles of techno tradition.

The Soma label seems to like The Tradition, but suffers from conservative safety which some see as consistant 'quality'. 'Game On!', the debut album from Chaser, is simply Nice, consistantly Nice, which makes it a suitable soundtrack for domestic activity such as DIY or cleaning, if nothing else. I'd like to highlight some tracks but every time I play it they all come and go without having penetrated my conscious hearing capability, much like supermarket muzak. That said, if lush production and quasi-musicality via machines is your bag, you'll like this album. Now, where's that screwdriver...

Away Team's 'Not My People (Black Plastic) has been getting positive reactions whenever I air it in public. The opening track is a simple but very effective fusion of 'spiritual' vocals backed by a looped mid-tempo appropriation of Deep South testifyin'. The 'disco' version pumps things up with good break changes and imaginative angles, and there's also a fair stab at a 'dub' which nicks a trad riff and duplicates the Jamaican feel to fine effect. A refreshing single.

'Game Over' by Ken Ishii (R&S) jumps and cuts loose into cliché-free territory, maintaining a rapid pace whilst being scratched and battered to hell by precision breaks. A jazzy organ joins in the fray, as does a hint of pop cheese, but the overall effect is one of wholesome, energetic abandonment, the kind of which is ruining Youth by tempting them to put yet another pound in that arcade game, as the title suggests - tut, tut...

Danny Breaks has a new dble-pack on his Droppin' Science label called 'Dislocated Sounds E.P.'. Aside from the usual 'nasty' d&b, which Danny does well without ever quite reaching premier standards, 'Hemispheres' sees him in a cool, 'jazzy' (i.e., double bass) mood. My favourite track, however, is 'Quadrilateral', a hip-hop break that's laced with delightfully spacy keyboards which sound like they could have come from the 'Barbarella' soundtrack. I'd like to see Danny moving further into this area because, let's face it, we don't really need more by-the-book 'heavy' d&b.

Those who complain about the 'old' Good Looking sound should hear 'Everglades', the new dble pack by Blu Mar Ten. These tracks are partly in the tradition of the Bukem sound, but the spirit is of progressive adventure, rather than predictability. The time signatures are definitely not dancefloor-bound, but the complexity of the various breaks adhere to their own rhythmic rules which make total sense. The title track and 'Voidfield' are stunning examples of 'musicality' which still moves along, underpinned by contorted bass lines. 'Santur' is as close as anything comes to convention, in the stepper's sense, whilst still sounding fresh, and 'Blush' is a beautiful, ambient excursion. It's mid-February and already I'm thinking Singles of the Year...

© Rob Lo (Feb 99).