Welcome to my new column where I review some of the tunes that have been used in the mix projects here at ej2dj. Now before you start emailing me asking for a review....DON'T BOTHER!!! Not even I get the chance to pick and choose here as all tunes reviewed are sent to me as recommended by the mixmaster himself DJ MuzikAL.
Got that? Good! Don't give it to me then!!
Steve Gilmore is an artist I much admire, mostly for his very professional mixing and musical technique but mainly for his canny ability to pour musical oil on the most troubled of stormy waters. Being able to combine Trance, HipHop, Funk, Ambient and House is no mean feat but Mr Gilmore seems to manage it with ease. Never one for long drawn out pointless openings, Steve takes us directly into the beat and sets the tone with some dreamy ethereal vocals and chilled spheres before slowly cranking up the mood to take us off into a rapture of deep rhythmical drum 'n' bass. Here we drown in the shallow waters of sunny ambience, our souls drifting away to a musical nirvana - hopefully seeking a better incarnation but secretly wishing for total oblivion.
When I hear the word "Finland" I used to think of lakes and ice hockey but now the first thing that comes to mind is "Mr Mystery" - such is the impact he has had in my life! It's impossible to see the words "Heart of Darkness" without thinking of Joseph Conrad's novel of human savagery and despair or the film Apocalypse Now. If the intention was to interpret those works into a musical piece of deep menace and a vision of the inexpressible then Mr Mystery truly succeeds. The tune opens with our losing touch with the outside world in a confusion of radio noises before exploding into a murky foreboding of lurking evil.
The incessant native drumming nullifies the senses, destroying our moral confidence and leads us zombie-like into the depths of corruption and decay. Do we find and kill the beast or are we plucked from "the horror" before fulfilling our mission? Close your eyes and imagine a tranquil waterway under an overcast sky leading to the uttermost ends of the Earth - it seems to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Who could ever forget Hendrix's seminal performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock? This profoundly spiritual work conjures up those same emotions of a country deeply troubled by a conflict of its own making. What is normally a deeply symbolic theme is made to ring hollow in an alternative arrangement out of its normal context. The tune is minimal but the feelings it creates through sorrow, reflection, enlightenment, outrage and hopelessness are there for everyone to experience. This is a thinking mans tune - whether it evokes visions of the pointless slaughter of indigenous natives, of hijacked planes crashing into skyscrapers, of cropped national front marchers singing anthems with their arms raised in nazi salutes or of a Chinese student standing in front of a tank - it will shock you into thinking of man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
Apart from death, nothing summons a more primitive fear in Man than the Sea. Its power, its unpredictability, and its abyssal depth fill most people with an awesome dread. To tackle such a theme is an ambitious project - Oxygen meets it head on like Moses and the Red Sea. It starts peacefully, with calm waves lapping at out feet but there's a hint of a swell on the horizon and the surf rises to bring large breakers crashing onto shore. Luckily the eye of the storm misses us but we fear to venture out into the foam for fear of the dreadful under currents that would surely drag us to our doom. Oxygen has mercifully spared us the full horror of a cold watery grave but tells enough to remind us to be ever respectful and reverent of this tempestuous element. Like the sea itself, I was fascinated by the soothing rhythms, the eddies and the majesty of this tune.
Not sure about the name Ground 0 - it seems a bit like calling yourself Belsen or Hiroshima. (I think he's changed it to Groundio now Joose - AL)
Pete is well known for being slightly insane so I guess it goes with the territory. The track begins somewhere between a John Carpenter movie soundtrack and a tune from the game "Doom" (the only PC game I regularly play because I just love reducing those monsters to a bloody pulp). Nice change of key with the first vocal but then all the menace is lost when the backing track comes in. I thought the rest of the track a bit of an anticlimax after the opening and I never did get the idea behind the lyrics. Nicely put together but never quite worked for me on the trance, dance or serious message level.
I'm not quite sure what I was to get ready for on this track. It all sounds very industrial and I imagined myself in a basement somewhere with lots of leaking pipes, sweating greasy workmen and the constant threat of some hideous mutated monster leaping out from a battered air-conditioning unit and ripping out my liver. Mezzer creates a good atmosphere but I would have preferred to prepare myself for a relaxing stretch on a sunny beach rather than be doused in glutinous radioactive waste! Nice drumming and cyclical rhythms but no real focus to the piece. Standing on its own it's an average Techno track however I'm sure it will cut smoothly into the final mix session. (It does - AL)
Steady opening build up with a good thumping beat leads you to believe that this is going to be a bit on the heavy side but the sudden introduction of the thin reedy synth soon changes that. Then we have some spheres before the thumping beat comes back and the tune repeats itself with slight modifications. There's some sound backing beats on this tune but the main melodies are really not strong enough to drag it above the ordinary. It's all a bit like the hype surrounding the introduction of a new chocolate bar. You think it's going to be something really different only to discover that's it's just a variant of something that's been around for years. I can still never eat a Mars bar without thinking of Mick Jagger - does anyone else have that problem?
This is one of those tunes that leaves you a tad frustrated because it could be so much better if the main tune had more variation in it. The backing track is full and sumptuous and it just cries out for an equally imaginative main theme. Just like a great work of art, a good tune requires a central subject to draw the ear in and give meaning to the whole piece. Imagine Constable's "The Hay Wain" where the central subject is replaced by a dumped shopping trolley and you'll get my meaning. On the other hand, perhaps Xtatica was going for something along the lines of a Jackson Pollock painting in which case it works just fine. It's at times like these that I find it hard to be subjective; after all one man's Constable is another man's Pollocks.
