Various Digital Drops USTA (Israel)

Well, you get an awful lot for your cash here. As well as the audio CD, you get a calendar featuring some of the hottest digital artists in the world, a directory of underground and overground dnace & trance contacts, and a CD-Rom featuring VJ Animation, digital art and festival footage. The audio CD does seem like a fairly random collection of tunes though, with dub, breaks, house, trance and techno all fighting for attention in the 11 tracks. Dubomatic’s Logical Dub opens things up, a very smooth and friendly dubby animal. Bushmen of the Kalahari’s Kalahari San Storm is quite an oddity – accoustic instruments looped over tribal chants, with beats picking up the pace to make an outdoor festival stomper with Steve Hillage (Gong) at the remix controls. Electric Tease’s Feel the Funk is featured as well, while Snake Thing cuts up the shit in his usual style on It’s All Good, and Eat Static’s Salon Kitty is a crisp breakbeat cinescope noodler. Canadians Mere Mortals finish the show with a beautiful, if brief, ambent comedown plateau. Good moments then, and a nice overall package – but the CD does sound a little too thrown-together. (6/10) DB

DJ Auspexx compiles this CD billed as a journey through progressive trance. Things start off minimal and sparse, with The Gnome Effect’s Visions of Gnomes and Atom’s Koo Koo building atmosphere nicely but adding litle else. Just as I was about to phone the melody police, 12 Moons’ Sneaky Suspicion saved the day, with its free party vibe, driving bass and fluid energy. Outolintu’s Johan Pomppas starts out kind of messy, but hangs together well with highly trippy layers shifting all over the place, a very odd Batman-esque bass run and mad mad squelches. Squaremeat’s Still Alive is one a lot of you will know already, funky yet terrifying with more going on then you can really keep tabs on, all over the place with wonderful acid lines and noises everywhere and underpinned by a groovy funk guitar loop. Plenty here then to get the brain bubbling along nicely, but as an album it’s a little bit inonsistent and may leave you wanting something more.

(6/10) DB

Biotonic Electrik Colors Solstice (Japan) Solstice is fastly becoming a very reliable label for quality. After their release of the Total Eclipse side project Antidote comes this debut release from new French outfit Biotonic. Although coming from the same town as the likes of Paps and Yumade, Biotonic has a much fresher sound. They have clearly been influenced by the booming more complex French sound, led by the likes of 3D Vision and Turbotrance. This album is both heavily psychedelic and built for the dancefloor. The tracks that really stand out for me are "Ayauesca" and "Intersideral Meeting", two hard pounding night tracks, and the guitar-riff driven, "The Ghost Show". A great release.

(8/10) TJ