Spaceboard – Com.pact

I’m kind of hoping we can drop the moniker “neo-fullon”, even though Com.pact often use it to refer to their own releases. It’s surprising but the last few releases in this sub-sub-sub-genre have been pretty interesting, and Spaceboard is among the most accomplished and – dare I say it – exciting of the lot. Space Katett opens with Apocalypse, which starts out with a rising, bubbling acid line, and travels via tiptop production and stopstarts into a crescendo which (while on the camembert side of euphoric) is unquestionably powerful. Blackout’s Hipped Up is a snarlier fella, adding new sounds in a techno-layered way rather than anything psytrancey. It wrenches glitchy acidised mayhem from deep within the somewhere before dreamy chords come in for the break, and it drops back into the bass-heavy mud picking up more acid and a couple of oldskool riffs for good measure. We like. Sesto Sento’s Water Pipe is built around the normal awesome production, with some cut up vocals making for a nice, easy vibe until this mayhem acid comes up, keeps peaking, peaks some more, peaks a bit more then…. Put it this way, the drop’s going to do the beeswax on the dancefloor. Diamond Sky from Ultravoice vs Aquatica is fairly standard stuff, nicely produced but lacking much magic, just as well as it makes Visual Paradox’s First Sun From The Rock sound all the better. Smooth, varied, and with some really nice sounds and melodies floating around, it sounds like a standard (but good) morning track. Then it gets fucked up (one of those system failure moments, but you will seriously think your CD player’s on the blink), and peaks, and drops into a quantized/shuffley moment, before easing back out into smooth goodness. This has some of the nicest production I’ve heard all year, and it’s particularly warming that at a time when so many are want to moan about the current state of play, a tune like this can rear its head. Seven Days from Bizarre Contact vs Phanatic is a classic piece of fullon, no questions asked. Everything’s in the right place – the bassline’s beefy and varied, the noises across the top are moved in a perfect way, and most importantly of all it has that special SOMEthing… that energy that moves it along and lets you know from the outset that it’s gonna be a good’un. It gets massively melodic at the end, but what the hell it’s summer and I for one will be dancing about to it in the sun comes up with a beer in my hand and a bag of white powder in the other. A new Misted Muppet tune has to be a good thing, and Spiritual Visions doesn’t disappoint. No sir. It’s up there with his best: bustling along until some messy merry melodies scatter around the place, it gets bubbly and messy and… just… fucking delicious. The breakdown is pure genius and the drop is out of this world. Frickin jayziz, as my Uncle Alan used to say. System Nipel has a tough job following this, but Pro Logic is pretty decent. Yeah it’s in normal Nipel style (being large, melodic, memorable) but what a piece of dance music. Wrenches at the hairs on the backs of the next and messes about with them. Ultravoice’s Air Waves is a fair way to close the album, nothing great going on here and a bit lacking, but if this is a problem then just skip back to Misted Muppet and pretend that’s the last track. Phew. I’ve not been as excited about a fullon album as this in a very long time, and only a couple of the tunes let this down from top marks. You may have the genre, but viewed as an example of its own kind of music Spaceboard is pretty damn excellent.