Natural Selection

A particularly nice CD this, compiled by Nate Protoculture and in the absence of a follow up to 2003’s Refractions, this comes pretty close in satisfying whatever part of the brain responds so well to his music. Manchester’s second-best kept secret Allaby kicks off with Unformality, a smooth and easy-tempo’d opening tune that moves deftly up to a neat plateau, begging to be played louder and louder (and who are we to argue.) Overlap’s Time Express raises the temperature, combining a lo-fi backbone with those very-Nano topend flurries. The main synthline may be a bit too much for some, having an anthemic twist that doesn’t really fit with the rest of the track, but it gets away with it. Somehow. On paper, the collaboration that is Tristan vs Protoculture looks like it ought to be rather tasty, and with Pusher they’ve proved that assumption to be dead right. It starts out deceptively, sitting perfectly in the mix, before bringing in added energy, vocal wibbles, and a general stirring in the loins, all over a trademark Protoculture rhythm section. Silver Surfers’ Chemical Structures is yummy: trademark melody literally cascades out of the top of this one, you can just close your eyes and imagine yourself dancing in the sunshine with a beer in your hand, kicking up the dust and swaying your tail about, flirting away with some chick with an incredibly small backsi… sorry, lost myself then. But it’s that kind of tune. AMD’s All We Have is fast and has an almost acidhouse groove in the bassline. Noisy noises and fluid runs pile on, and the final run is pinned down by a gnarly, shit-kicking, uber-analogue riff. Trpitych’s Celtych does my head in. It’s got a wonderful intro which sounds like a welsh male voice choir, going into some sort of lute or lyre or something, then it goes a bit Indian, then the beats drop. Generic bassline, which we can live with, but then this… sample… this…. Bird who sings a bit like enya… complete with a sort of inoffensive light orchestra underneath it. Triptych, you are capable of more than this! Swiftly on, quick what have we got next, thank Shiva because I can’t believe it’s not Protoculture with his Glastonbury 2004 rework of Magnetic. And awesome it is as well – deeper, longer, smoother… pulled out all the stops on this one, very impressive. And up next, Protoculture’s remix of Silicon Sound’s Nexus 6. Again, on paper this ought to be great, yup you guessed it. It’s nine and a half minutes of sheer perfection, the original I caned to death and this remix looks like going the same way. A sound balance between the two producers’ sounds, and nothing short of transporting… I’m going to shut up, because you don’t want anyone talking over this. Finally Silver Surfers bring the album to a close with Zen La, more slow-boiling than Chemical Structures but once again it’s all about that melody, building up into a wonderful break and then an acidic drop that’ll have them boinging up and down like atoms in a particle accelerator. Or your money back. At the end of the day, whether you view this as a halfway-protoculture-album, or as the next step in Nano’s awesome output the last couple of years, you won’t be disappointed by this.