Balam – AP Records

Decode opens up at a full pelt 150bpm, with a bassline I’ve heard thousands of times before, more stopstarts than an acid techno deejay mucking about with the crossfader after his fifth line of speed, some dreadful vocals and a main run that should give Protoculture ample grounds to sue. Next up, title track Balam opens up at full pelt 150bpm, with a bassline I’ve heard a thousand times before, yucky swirly topends and more keychanges than the Belgian entry for the Eurovision contest. It also has more stopstarts than an acid techno deejay mucking about with the crossfader after his fifth line of speed, some dreadful vocals and a main run that should give Protoculture ample grounds to sue. El Guarian Del Sol opens up at full pelt 150bpm, with a bassline I’ve heard thousands of times before, more stopstarts than an acid techno deejay mucking about with the crossfader on his fifth line of speed, some dreadful vocals and a main run that should give Protoculture ample grounds to sue. There is a mistake on Killer Elephants: it is only 148bpm. It has more stopstarts than a football match between two teams of eleven lepers, and as much originality and flair as something I’d wipe off my shoe after walking the dog in the park. Flow slows the pace down and uses all the sounds we’ve already heard on previous tracks, and does the same thing, only slower. I’m trying to look for something positive to say about this, incidentally. But there’s nothing. There’s no soul to the music, there’s nothing impressive about it, and I cant even see it really working that well on a dancefloor. Flow and Blue Sky seem to have this nonsensical voice over it, and the latter tune is so weak it’s almost unlistenable. Utopia runs in the same way, there’s absolutely no excitement or energy anywhere to be found, and all I can see is a club full of people making their way to the bar. It’s limp, generic, uninspired stuff. Self Portrait is horrendous, it’s 135bpm and four-undeniably-to-the-floor, sort of like a dark industrial disco nailhammer nightmare. I can think of dozens of tracks that have the same vibe, or the same goal, but just accomplish it so much better. Progressive track: 130bpm and fluid, Evolution more or less gets away with what it’s doing but contains most of the annoyances on the rest of the album; and it’s still a long, long way off any of the top-shelf progressive that’s been coming out lately. Obligatory closing track Thank You has some laughably wonky melodies, and once again it sounds like a daft impersonation of any number of more able artists. I’m just going to reiterate how psyreviews does its reviews here, because I don’t want anyone accusing me of ripping into something out of hand. Every single CD starts out with 5/10 when it slides into the CD player. The album has to impress to get bonus marks; impressing psyreviews in a way that lifts it over the crowd of other releases, offers something unique, or moves a dancefloor in a facemelting way. And absolutely nothing on this album does anything of the sort. It’s utterly generic, derivative stuff devoid of soul, expression or meaning, and a lot of it doesn’t even have enough grounding to keep a pilled-up dancefloor amused for six minutes. Quite seriously one of the worst CD’s I have ever listened to in four years of psyreviews.

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