Phutures And Options – Spiral Trax

Koxbox offshoot Saiko-Pod are a well-respected name in the global trance circuit, and this album has been widely-anticipated as destined for great things. Essentially here there’s three separate flavours at work – kicking off with a fresh and eventful fusion of progressive and psychedelic trance, a downbeat and more meandering style, and a fresh take on the tribal-organic side of psychedelic trance.

Two Dots kicks things off, and it’s a joyous marriage of those two styles of trance. It’s difficult to put your finger on, but to me they seem to use progressive sounds and layering techniques, and manipulate everything in a truly psychedelic fashion. Samples are everywhere, and well executed, and the swirling pads and fat bass are enough to put a smile on anyone’s face. The “quantize” button has been used to full effect in Silent Running, a wonderfully-produced track with great sounds phasing in and out, and a good almost morning groove.

Phutures has a harder edge, washed with progressive-friendly pads and effects – and the effect is so universally smile-provoking that I wouldn’t be surprised to see this doing the business in Ibiza this summer. Options is a slomo breakbeat excursion – using an ambling bassline that after an initial period of being rather special and different quickly gets irritating. The lumbering dino-beat to everything quickly becomes a lumbering spastic dino-beat through its repetition, and has you reaching for that skip button before it’s even halfway through.

Swiftly on to Wednesday, a chillout-friendly tune with nice high-reaching pads and future sound of london vocals washed into the mix. Magnetic Force starts well, with a solid bassline taking the energy levels increasing and increasing in energy until some stupid damn monkeys come in and make a mess of things. I mean monkeys. A killer big synth riff, which could have saved the day, is spoiled again by some silly Depeche Mode style vocals, and more damn monkeys. Skip.

Going Down In Chinatown is a sublime, beatless melody workout, with feedback washing over cute little pads and runs that certainly get the hairs on the back of the next standing up nicely. And tacked on at the end (probably) is Tron, a truly wonderful example at what Saiko-Pod is all about – that mix of progressive and psychedelic. The pads and stabs are all nice and clean, they’re all morphed to perfection, and laid down in a truly masterful way right through its ten delightful minutes (and not a monkey in sight.)

Basically then, when Phutures And Options works, it’s brilliant – and you’re unlikely to hear anything else reaching as high as Two Dots and Tron elsewhere this year. But the ambling midsection of the album makes for an odd overall feel.