I bought the Darren Price "Under The Flightpath" album in the UK a
couple of months ago and was pretty disappointed with it - listened to
it three times and then sold it.
I was hoping for some more tracks like the ones on his "Blueprints" and
"Attic" EPs - clean hard synth lines with relentless pumping rhythms
driving everything along at a tidy pace. Instead it seems to me that
these new tracks have all the hallmarks of what I would term as
nondescript hard techno - to my ear the sounds are pretty much all the
same, with very little sonic detail or flourishes to surprise and
delight...for this type of music give me Luke Slater's Morganistic
project any day.
On a similar note, I wasn't exactly dazzled by Surgeon's debut album
"BasicTonalVocabulary" - too fucking basic if you ask me - a couple
of well written insistent tracks (especially "Waiting" ) made it
worth the money, but on the whole it sounds as though Surgeon hasn't
really developed his own sound yet, and he seems to have taken a leaf
out of RDJ's book with a meagre 45 min of music on the CD.
On a positive note, I would recommend to everyone who's into
Panasonic/Autechre to check out the recent Bernd Friedmann album
"Technischer Anhang". I got this last week and have had it on repeat
play ever since :) It's a lot more musical than the "Leisure Zones"
album, but still a far from conventional record...dispossed German
voices drifting in and out, beautifully melancholy piano
interludes,cheesy guitar loops warped and turned sinister...plus
minimal sounds galore and two polished future noise tracks - one with
a heavily distorted bass beat loop that has to be heard to be believed
- if you liked the Sabres of Paradise crunchy remix of the CB's
"Leaving Home" you'll love this (Track 12).
I don't know whether the album is a ltd edition or a promo or what,
but it didn't have any artwork or track listings - I'd appreciate any
info on this album.
James