(Yes, older stuff AGAIN! Anybody want to start sending ME the Autechre
promos?)
As One - Reflections
Pretty hit-and-miss, with several really excellent tracks. I've
listened to "Majik Jar" plenty in the week I've had this. I guess I'll
go track down the remix album.
Legion of Green Men - Spatial Specific
Definitely a grower. The details here reveal themselves over
time. This isn't really ambient, but rather very mellow trance. A
tasteful melodicism and bright production really help flesh out the
rhythms, with some lovely vocals that never become too ethereal. The
last few tracks reinvent electro-acoustic much more successfully than
Miasma ever will.
Techno Animal - Re - Entry
A disk of very spartan rhythm tracks and a disk of '95 flavor
industrial ambient. This works if I'm in the right mood, but usually
it's just too monotonous. Kevin Martin has released about five times
more records of this stuff in the last two years than anybody really
needs to hear. The highlight is the twenty minute Ballard-novel
soundtrack, "Cape Canaveral" on the second disk. Get Ice's album before
you even think about buying this.
Dj Krush - Krush
Several great twisted and hazy interludes separating some really
loathesome female R&B-style singing and cheezy vamps. Only one track of
fourteen really cuts the mustard. Why is it so hard to get this
trip-hop thing right?
Hedfunk - S/T
Much better than the above, with only half of the thirteen
tracks eating complete shit. A couple of Meters and James Brown
forgeries come off well, but it's hard to respect these two for adding
so little to those classic funk sounds. Why is it that this generation
is so conservative in their borrowings from jazz? I want to hear
somebody mix hip-hop with Albert Ayler.
Banco de Gaia - Last Train to Lhasa
The first disk is a mostly (but not entirely) useless wash of
4/4 beats and gratuitous ethnic samples, but the last forty minutes of
the second disk resurrects Ultraworld vintage Orb to good effect. This
is as derivative as all its detractors claim, but it's also pretty nice
to sit and stew to. Where does the third disk of the limited edition
fall in this spectrum.?