From Tom Millar Sent Tue, May 4th 1999, 01:48
From Tom Millar Sent Tue, May 4th 1999, 01:48
Whoo! Just what I need, more 313 wank. And it's actually good. I'm listening as I write this review, so it may seem stunted at times. Oh well. 1. Aril Brakha: Otill Odd electro beat with pulsing Detroit squirts and nice chords. Not very funky, though, more ethereal. Not my choice for an opening track, but then, I like basslines a lot. This song does not have one. Jazzy chords on top are sweet but not particularly fresh. Maybe if it were a little dirtier I would like it better; it almost touches New Age in production cleanliness, and one of my favorite parts about Detroit is that nobody knows how to set their mixer levels. Where's the cracks and crunches? 2. Quiet Daze: November At first I thought this was a Derrick May production. Swinging 909 with mad hi-hats all over the place. Then this very CR-style filtered chord-memory pulse comes in and I know it ain't no May. Kind of a nice combo of Berlin and Detroit sonic styles and patterns. This one has a bassline, and crunches in the midrange a few times. Yay! That's what I like! 3. Tony Drake: To Touch You Wow, great piano sound, and the acoustic guitar sound too. What the FUCK? New age, New age, smooth jazz, smooth jazz, YUCK. Gross. Raise Your hand if you buy Detroit records for the realistic sounding instruments and chilled-out weather channel vibe... didn't think so. This one rates an "oops." 4. Aril Brakha: Groove La Chord Makes up for the first track's sterility by punching the drums into the red and adding some pulsing CR type chords. Very Substance-esque, but faster and maybe a bit harder hitting. You can hear the compression at work on the bass drum, which adds some tough-flavored funk. Chords rise up and shatter and then the track stops. What? Only a little over four minutes? What the hell! I guess that's why CD players have repeat buttons. 5. Microworld: Signals Houselike piano chords open it up, very faint, and then Kenny Larkin appears out of nowhere with densely layered melodies and sparse latin-like rhythms and a barely-there bass. Wait, this isn't Kenny. Philip McGarva? Oh. Well, it sounds like Kenny. I think I'll just pretend it's Kenny, because that's a lot easier than remebering two names when the music sounds so similar. I like it, though. Soft yet digital. 6. Louis Haiman: Soul Purpose a 16-bit cadence of plinking noises and serious beepery. So far this seems like the most original track on here. Louis uses sharp digital beeps and static arpeggios like a lot of other people we all know and love, but somehow in between the 909 at the bottom and the intense layering and soft reverb on top he manages to get across the smooth Detroit sci-fi sound. I makes me want to be an R2 unit. 7. Derrick May & Steve Hillage: Mysterious Traveller Arf. Heard this already like two years ago. Derrick! New material please! God dammit, just when I thought this had to be a fresh track and next thing you know it's that same song I have on a System 7 album three releases back. All in all, not bad, a little minimal and maybe too many mixer/FX solo sections for my tastes. But if you don't already have this, you are required to buy this comp, since Derrick is involved. 8. The Detroit Escalator Co.: Plumb Suspenseful spelunking soundtrack patterns. Echoing claps and cymbals emphasize the feeling of a long pipelike tunnel and the chords/SFX add to the ambiance of darkness. Builds and intensifies rather nicely. IDM fans should really like this, assuming of course you like most IDM. I can't really say much else except that it captured my imagination pretty damn well. I'm gonna imitate Hrvatski now and end my review with a one-word blanket description. Foreboding. 9. Indio: Snowdrifts I know this is John Beltran and he's supposed to be really good and I should have a lot to say about this one, especially considering that it's nearly ten minutes long, but this is a bit too retro even for me. This track made me want to do absolutely nothing. Beatless ambient noodlism. I'm sorry folks, no cigar on this one. If I want snowdrifts, I'll get some Biosphere. Where's the funk? Are we in Detroit, or what? 10. The Vanisher: First Stop Holy Shit! Who the fuck is this? I get on the subway and off we go into filtered-sample oddness. One sampled loop from what seems to have originally been a house fill on top of ambient noise from a subway station. Looped digital delay somehow accentuates the train-ride experience. Why does so much Detroit techno, or even IDM, have to do with high-speed locomotion and underground spaces? Nothing recognizable as a bassline but funky nonetheless. Feels very, very strange for some reason, and I like it. 11. The Vanisher: Elementary Okay, first we have something that sounds very original. I suppose I should have guessed that the next track, from the same artist, wasn't going to hold up. Lame deep house poop. Nevermind. Yeah, there's a bassline, and boy, is it white. 12. Rhythim is Rhythim: beforethereafter HOT DAMN! A NEW DERRICK MAY TRACK! Why am I so excited? It's the same string sound and soloing style we've heard a gazillion times before. 808 samples fail to add groove. Sliding FM bells underneath also fail to add funk. Not funky at all. Very IDM, actually. Throw a little portamento on some FM presets, lots of fifths and minor thirds with some ethereal sounding string patch, add minimal beats and there you go. I hope Mr. May is just trying to remind us where all of this comes from, because if he doesn't have any ideas better than this then it's just bad news. It sure took him a long time to come up with this chopped-and-formed piece of jerky. OVRVW: Even with some extremely weak individual tracks, this comp does work well as a whole. It's all Detroit all the way. Perhaps if I were in a slightly less hyperactive, sardonic punk flavor of mood, I would appreciate it more- but I'm not. Some of these sounds, especially the softer, spacier ones, just sound extremely dated to me, and the patterns they're arranged in aren't particularly original either. Those of you looking for another solid comp on the lines of Reel or '93 era IDM should definitely pick this up; it fits the bill. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of new ideas emerging from the current wave of Detroiters on this one- I guess if I want wacky fresh stuff from 313 I'll just have to stick to Planet E. Tom