Pablo's Eye - Everything She Wants Grows Blue (Swim)

It's rare to find A) an album that actually carries the sleeve note "use of headphones is recommended" and B) a new release from long-term sound collage artists Pablo's Eye. This new offering - yet more quality from the Swim label - is not a million miles away from the trio GOL, last spotted on China Records covering Art of Noise and sounding like a '90s 4AD version of Propaganda.

All tracks on Everything She Wants Grows Blue merge into one seamless chill out or rather chiller, some of the sounds are certainly mined from horror and high tension soundtrack material. But the finished product - ranging from soft drum & bass with sensitive female vocal narration ('The Episodic Nature of Life') to spooky ambient orchestricks with backwards vocals ('The Adjuster') is definitely worth checking out. Strange to note the inclusion of Celtic strings - proving to be the perfect accompaniment to post-club, post-dance beats. Stand-out tracks are the hypnotic 'A Sermon on the Radio' and 'That Night Together With Her' - which sum up all the albums good points in one five minute session. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Various - Lost In Space soundtrack (Epic)

What with Spawn, The Jackal and most recently Godzilla, US film soundtracks are becoming useful Best Of selectors of new and second-hand UK big beat tracks. Lost In Space is a little different in that, following Orbital's lead, it features some pieces of original dance score. This time the title track comes from Apollo 440, who turn in the rampage of the 'Lost In Space Theme'. More comic than cosmic but made for the silver screen and a track that should also translate well into everyday life with some decent remixes.

This soundtrack is also the one to get for a superb vocal excursion from Juno Reactor & The Creatures. Surely not THE Creatures in the throbbing techno environment? Fatboy Slim's 'Everybody Needs A 303' is another highlight, as is @440's mellow 'Will & Penny's Theme' and a track from Space with their ruffed-up dancefloor hats on. With only eight dance tracks, the CD also includes ten parts of the original motion picture score by Bruce Broughton. Less than attention-grabbing, but worth a listen for the Terminatoresque 'Spiders Attack'. Possibly the best of the summer's blockbuster soundtracks. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

The Egg - Travelator (China)

I've always shuddered at the thought of "dance bands that can actually play live", but The Egg can be forgiven just about anything after their demented debut LP of last year, Albumen. This year's offering carries on from where they left off, but because of the their dance viewpoint they've moved with the times. As a result you get tracks like 'Number Cruncher'. Ever wondered how blunted melodies (from the big beat vibe) sound against an acid jazz style funk jam? 'Number Cruncher' has the answer.
Travelator has much more variation than its predecessor. Like the live drum & bass skank of 'Bunmela' and 'Getting Away With It', which vocally is a full-on Brian Eno homage. All of these experiments with different styles certainly work well on plastic. And I'd love to hear tracks like 'Bunmela' pounding away from a live stage in a club.

Other experiments don't work as well. 'Willow' is full of brilliant melodies, classic Egg-style melodies in fact (if there is such a thing already). But whether it works performing them with a mix of drum & bass and classic strings & woodwind is another matter entirely!

Perhaps the continual experimentation is also The Egg's downfall on this LP. Whereas Albumen had a heads down, "let's play live and tape it!" feel, Travelator sounds altogether more prepared and measured. But the mixture is great. Totally refreshing and summery. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

World Standard - Country Gazette (Asphodel)

Don't be fooled by the country & western packaging and titles, the banjos on this LP are merely crackly samples mixed into bigger picture. This is on Asphodedel after all; wide-screen panoramas from the one of the few legendary US ambient labels. Country Gazette compiles 14 mostly very short tracks all of which follow very similar themes - old vinyl samples, banjos, wind sound effects and true grit. This strange concoction comes courtesy of Sohichiro Suziki and Haruomi Honsono, the latter of which was a founding father of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, the legendary Japanese experimentalist group that also spawned Ryuchi Sakamoto.

So imagine YMO being cut-and-pasted into an obscure cameo appearance in a legendary leftfield western like The Misfits and you'd have this album as the soundtrack. It's hypnotic and so perfectly produced that you can't help but listen to the whole thing, in one go, without pauses. It's one of those. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Pizzicato Five - Happy End of You (Matador)

Pizzicato Five's output just seems to get better. That said, this isn't exactly a P5 album... It was only a few months ago that I had the pleasure of reviewing Pizzicato Five's Happy End of The World on these very pages. Looking back, a 9/10 review was certainly generous, but it was one of those instant classics. Happy End Of You, on the other hand, is a remix album with new interpretations of almost all the tracks by a very diverse array of beat surgeons, many of which have been steadily leaked on promo for the past year.

As always with a remix album, the results are very, very varied. Some you'll love forever and others you'll want to instantly forget. Automator's mix of 'Love's Theme' is fresh and useful on the dancefloor. 808 State's track on the other hand adds nothing more than a percussive backing to an original that was best placed as a quirky end of night cheese theme, rather than a mid-night groove. Mixes from Daddy O, DJ Dara and John Oswald are great for 12"s but aren't going to set the world alight as album tracks. But it is interesting to hear bands like GusGus, the High Llamas and Saint Etienne in control - the latter's take on the P5 sound is exactly what you'd expect, but quality all the same. But final prizes should go to Momus ('Trailer Music') and Daniel Miller (working with Gareth Jones on 'The World Is Spinning at 45rpm') who both use their remixing might to completely rip up the originals but retain their original quirkiness. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Echo Park - The Revolution of Everyday Life (Lo Recordings)

Echo Park are a dark industrial drum & bass outfit about which I know little. But by listening to the grooves and some in depth sleeve note examinations reveal that this LP is the next logical step in one of 1998's emerging threads of dance music. It's the thread that began with the likes of Fridge (whose Ceefax debut is now slated for a re-release) and continued recently with album releases from UI and Family of God. Echo Park comprises Spykid (heavy on the "loops and scratches") and James Tye (providing more traditional guitars and basses input). They're joined by a veritable army of guitar semi-Gods (including Thurston Moore) all of whom are sampled and treated so as to blend seamlessly into the mix. It's a hypotnotic effect which, on tracks like 'Aum (Aum)' is like a nineties version of Robert Fripp's early Frippertronics and guitar noodlings. But other tracks like 'The Sound of Money' I just don't get - fragments of ideas are used and looped into something that lacks either winning melody or rhythmic depth. But this is only a temporary glitch - 'Razorkiss' fixes the latter problem while 'Air Victim' fixes the former. And 'Innocent X' totally rips things up, as a dance act that employ a 'fuzz bass' player should rightly do. Treat with caution. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine