Break Out

Stevie Wonder was just 21 when Music Of My Mind was released. And (with the exception of one guitar solo and a bit of trombone) he played every single instrument on that record.

Every single instrument. Every single note. Every single drum fill, every single everything.

Facts like this make you think what a wonderful world this is. You can walk into HMV and buy – actually scratch that, walking is so last century – you can go to iTunes and download Music Of My Mind and instantly have your living space enhanced by Genius.

Music has an otherworldly ability to capture something amazing, to make an imprint of the musician, the author, the visionary – and then translate it through time, space, sound – into your ears.

Timothy Leary banged on a lot about genetic communication, but I’m not aware of him giving enough attention and thought to the way in which music has this sort of supra-linear way of passing down not just thoughts and words but colours, emotions, feelings, situations and everything else besides. Music is amazing, and psytrance is shit.

Psytrance get’s sodding DNA. Bad samples, uniform basslines, Israelis-speaking-through-vocoders. So many tricks we’ve heard before, so many eurotrance riffs.

This album is shockingly bad, but that it’s bad is far from shocking.

I can’t believe shit like this exists, which is why for the present writer, it no longer does.