INTELLIGENT DANCE MUSIC TIMES v1.2
Yes, 'tis me, XDWombat, your intrepid Intelligent Dance Music
reporter, checking in yet again. this issue comes to you courtesy of
my roommate's seemingly infinite-capacity wallet. In this issue, I
tackle Orbital's 2nd, System 7's new single, Fortran 5's "bad head
park" and a compilation of eurotrance. coming soon - comments on full
length discs from hardfloor, sandoz and god knows what else...
Orbital - Orbital
Internal TRUCD2
This album takes forever to get going! First you have 2 mins of Lt
Worf from Star Trek doing his "theory of the moebius" shtick (yes,
again) and then another minute of mucking around before the 2nd track
"Planet Of The Shapes" finally gets into gear. Once it does, however,
it's almost worth the wait. I especially like the indian motifs that
show up later in the track. Unfortunately, interest wanes rapidly
(OK, *my* interest waned rapidly - i know ashdown thinks this is god
on a stick). The Lush-Impact-Remind suite just goes on and on and
gets very tiresome very quickly. Walk Now... starts off promising
with the digeridoo sample but goes nowhere fast. (As a side note, the
digeridoo is fast becoming the Unbearable Cliche du Jour of dance
music. digeridoo: just say no!) Monday is just plain annoying (as
was its progenitor, Sunday). Fortunately, Halcyon+on+on saves the
day, being just as beautiful and wondrous as its original.
Summary: Nice moments, but not enough. 6.5/10
System 7 - Sinbad/Quest
Weird And Unconventional/Big Life BFLD 8
130 3:49 Sinbad (Bandit Edit)
125 8:30 Quest (Moody Boys Interpretation)
130 5:50 Sinbad (7th Voyage Of Sinbad)
125 6:43 Quest (Moon Mix)
Two mixes of each track. The first Sinbad mix is just an edit of the
LP version and is thus utterly worthless (not even a clever edit, they
just fade it out early.) The "7th Voyage" mix is substantially
different, being mixed by Moody Boy Tony Thorpe. Very driving and
filled with plenty of weird effects, this would cause widespread
boogieing on a dance floor. If I ever decide to go back to spinning
trance sets seriously, I would definitely buy the 12". Nice added 303
sprinkles above Hillage's slightly more aggro than usual guitar
playing, stunning noise break... Good track!
The new song, "Quest" is treated to two versions: the "moon mix" and
the "moody boys interpretation." The "moon mix" is a pure
hillage/giraudy piece and is thus quite spacey (although there is a
beat). Pure trance of the kind found on the "777" LP.
The Moody Boys Interpretation is a slightly harder take on the track,
but is still very trancy. The whole disc, overall, is quite a spacy
trip in fact - I listened to it while lying down last night and fell
asleep before it ended!
Summary: some beautiful spacy trance stuff that will appeal to fans of
"777" (you listening, ashdown!?)
Various Artists - Trancesylvania
23 Records CD 2
131 6:11 Sintox - In The Abyss (ends at 155 BPM)
140 5:34 Polygon Window - Quoth
140 6:26 Neurotrancer - Discorsi (XXL Remix)
150 5:44 Microbots - Flatline
150 5:20 4 Voice - Music Hypnotizes (Hypnotizing Mix)
150 4:35 Cop Killer - FF (Trance Collector's Edit)
152 5:12 Sabotage - Kayht
137 5:43 Illuminatus - Hope
136 7:41 Age - Eighth Sphere
147 3:48 2 Def DJs vs Mr Freeze - Trancespirit (Darkroom Remix)
132 4:52 In Vain - Refused Composition
130 4:36 Dolphin - Warrios Of The Rainbow (Eyes Of The Fire Mix)
134 5:43 Humate - Love Stimulation (lovemix by Paul van Dyk)
145 4:58 Eskimos & Egypt - State Of Surrender (Eurodobulous Remix)
122 6:59 Moby - Next Is The E (Synthe Mix)
143 4:23 Neurotrancer - Freedom
153 5:38 Escape - Escape To Mars
136 6:00 SDL - Space Traveler
148 5:30 Oxytozin - Sugar & Cinnamon (hardtrance mix)
147 6:47 Memorizer - Memory
142 6:49 Cop Killer - Freedom Of Speech
145 9:57 Psilocybin - Part 2
5:43 Illuminatus - Hope... revisited (dedicated to...)
Opening up with a remarkably pretty Joey Beltram piece, this is a
smart compilation with a dumb fucking name. The aforementioned
Beltram track starts off gothic and lovely and turns into a
brainmelting pounding piece of hardcore at the end, which doesn't
thrill me all that much. "Quoth" sucks, being all banging with no
substance. "Discorsi" is excellent though, and is making me rethink
my blind prejudice against tracks > 130 BPM. Ditto for "Flatline"
although its 303-driven stomp is a little familiar. On the other
hand, Cop Killer & Sabotage remind me exactly why I hated fast stuff
to begin with. Thus it comes as something of a relief to move back
into relatively slower climes with Illuminatus & Age, the latter of
which reminds me of Giorgio Moroder, oddly enough. More typical acid
stomp from 2 Def DJs, some very nice pounding hardtrance from In Vain,
and Dolphin's attempt to update Tangerine Dream for the 90's round out
disc 1.
Disc 2 starts out with what sounds like New Order, but is in fact
Humate's uplifting trance. Moby's fine Synthe Mix of Next Is The E (a
huge San Francisco rave hit, btw) is a welcome, if strange, item (122
BPM? it's practically chill music compared to the rest of this
comp!). The breathing room doesn't last, cos it's back to 143 BPM and
Neurotrancer's 2nd offering, which is also very fine - pretty and
melodic, with no sign of that annoying resonant 909 thwomp that seems
to characterize high-tempo music these days. Escape will jar the
fillings out of your mouth (no, that's not a compliment, coming from
me.) Other tracks I like on disc 2: SDL, Oxytozin, Memorizer,
and finally, Psilocybin's epic of acid & orgasms.
Summary: geez, a LOT of music here! if you're into the
hardtrance/acid thing, there's gotta be something in here that will
appeal to you.
Fortran 5 - Bad Head Park
Mute 9 61461-2
1:13 Fortran 5
128 3:54 Persian Blues
125 3:37 Choppers
5:00 Heavy Clouds Building
139 4:32 Time To Dream
124 7:04 I'm an Organist
4:13 Outlaw Traffic
121 6:35 Our Little Village
123 3:39 Layla (Derek sings Derek)
1:34 Ken Livingstone
125 5:25 Hook A
123 7:03 Fire In The Sky
3:48 A Place Of Horror
96 11:24 Bad Head Park
Bad Head Park, in case you don't know, is an Intelligent Dance Music
((TM) (C) 1993 behlenfluid productions) concept album about the Gulf
War. Hmmm, sounds a bit dated, but let's take an objective look at
the music. What we find is this: Cute intro track, into the
horrendous "Persian Blues." I feel physically ill even thinking about
it. I'd like to say "fortunately, things get better from here" but
that would be a lie. This disc is absolute crap from start to finish.
ARGGGGHH! I never thought "Blues" was an incredible album but at
least it was listenable - this is just pretentious self-indulgent
twaddle and I'm sorry I'm even writing about it all because somebody
might go out and pick it up just to see if "it's really as bad as all
that." Well, it is. So there.
(OK, "Our Little Village" and "Fire In The Sky" aren't *that* bad, and
"Layla" is good for a giggle, maybe, but that's it. Really, I mean
it. Don't even check it out from curiosity - why waste your money on
this when you could be buying "Tales of Ephedrina" instead?)
Whoo! There you have it. I'm all typed out and my thumb has
callouses from running the BPM program. Tune in next time for more
Intelligent Dance Music where our motto is: "If it doesn't make my pet
gerbil Spanky shake his little rodent heiney, then it sucks."
Jon Drukman jdrukman%dlsun87@us.oracle.com
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Always note the sequencer - this will never let us down.