Ease Division

Psyreviews thinks this should be called “Eeeeeaaasssseee Diiiivvviisssiiooonnnn”. Read those two words, mantra-like, for the next twenty minutes and you have the approximate effect of the music on this CD (though the music doesn’t have that wobbly headache thing you’ve now got after staring at your monitor. Go and have a lie down.) Nine tracks of seriously wicked chillout, and by that we don’t mean trance plodded at half-speed, or a breakbeat and a couple of pads floating around somewhere. Stress Assassin’s R.B.C is serious, proper, heavy DUB, a theme which pemeates this CD with 12 Moons’ Beach Bum Drumz enough to make Peter Tosh fall out of his hammock. Human Blue & DJ Floyd’s When The Pieces Come Together hangs brilliantly, it escalates into who knows where and the layering and texturing is second to none. Matenda almost out-shpongles shpongle with Imagination, and Robert Leiner’s Roots FM 1 soars and soars and takes you jolly well with it. Top mrks though must go to Vibrasphere, whose 3300 Feet Over is possibly one of the best pieces of downbeat electronic music ever recorded. It brings a tear to the eye, really gets the emotions up without veering towards planet cheesy, and geniunely leaves you with a sense of woner about the planet – herbs or no herbs. All of which goes quite a long way to making this a damn essential album.