Double D – Dance N Dust
Various Artists
The return of Dance n Dust records is one of psyreviews’ greatest excuses to be happy. Along with… erm… shit, there must be something else. Erm… okay, the music. Nine tracks, eight artists, six countries, low bpms. Shaman’s Bomullstuss builds up perfectly with exquisite layering before a gorgeous yet understated break: melodies rise but never take control. It’s a perfect gap before a perfect drop, and off into more perfect progressive trance. Australia’s Decoy pops up twice here, with a couple of utter crackers. Fatty Finn evolves into this incredibly techglitch plateau, with a plethora of clearcut 80s-ish sounds. Meanwhile Suparoo is a gorgeous piece of work, pure production brilliance. The sounds are so alien, so hardly-there-at-all… and when a gentle 303 comes in to give it some elevation, you have no choice but to go along with it. Lovely. Pythagoraz’s Constrainment is an utter charmer, you can’t help but catch this one. It has that atmosphere of a tune that’ll have you forgetting your pint of organic cider and heading to the dancefloor. DJ Asherun vs Darwish’s We Are Stoned is okay, it’s a nice fat groove that chunks along nicely, until things become dominated by a long Jim Morrison sample that keeps on for the whole tune. Annoyingly, the track itself is one of the cleverer ones on the album, but the sample stupefies it somewhat. Maybe it’s just me: My opinion of Jim Morrison is that he was a good showman, a mediocre poet, and a legendary drunk. But anyway: the energy and the intricacy of the backing should keep things focused. Remote Access’ Doors To Dream is nice enough, a more squelchy and psychedelic take on the theme on offer, but in straddling two styles it doesn’t seem to engage on either front. El Zisco’s Littleway is a dream, it’s got bags of fluid housey attitude and just coasts along brilliantly, making you dream back to whitesandy summertime adventures with a ticklish European girl. Itaitaiko’s In The Groove is a weak one; it seems to rely too much on the bottomend, the result being an unnecessarily clunky tune that seems to have to struggle to move. Finally, we all know Threshold Productions can do no wrong, and Sound System is a wonderful, wonderful piece of music. Chilled, breezy, laidback, engaging, hypnotic, orgasmic, life-affirming, groove-riding, icy, crystalline… the psyreviews thesaurus is exhausted. All in all this is a solid compilation, Dance n Dust are welcomed back with open arms. Very good shit indeed.
