Spring Break

Charmingly, innocently dreadful

I love Mushy Records. Not because they’re brilliant, or because they send me a load of free party-enhancers. It’s because their music is so thoroughly, quirkily bad. They seem to have no idea about anything, and I love them for that.

The last Bubble album was so-bad-it’s-good, and still sounds just as so-bad-it’s-good. Spring Break isn’t quite up there in terms of turgidity, but it’s not far off. This is music for Israeli kids, music for people who weren’t even born when acid house was happening.

It’s simple, simple stuff. The artist and track names read like something psyreviews.com might have made up for a laugh a few years ago: this CD was compiled by DJ Space Meg. Go figure.

Space Meg vs In-Panic’s Black Hole isn’t really so bad in the scheme of things; it’s inoffensive, jumpy stuff that contains all the formula-essential psytrance ingredients: sweeping intro, bouncing bassline, melody swirls, big breakdown, and nice DJ-friendly breaks every 32 bars.

Bubble – the psytrance Frank Spencers – offer up Clear. It starts with a looped vocal of a woman whose accent sounds decidedly Bristol saying “basic, basic, basic.” Faithful old Bubble follow her to the word and make an incredibly basic, done-in-an-afternoon track. The production is lazy, the melodies are forced, and the way they try and “coax” a riff out of three disparate sounds is as laughable as it is cryable. There is then a disgusting, nauseating rave breakdown and the track then completely loses its way – the melange of ideas thrown at the final third is random, ineffective, pointless.

Twilight’s All Dimensions is an inoffensive plod through standardized psytrance (again) featuring (again) all those regulation psygredients. Mojo’s Mind Control has the worst guitarline in quite a while. The bassline and rhythm section are generic, there’s scant progression anywhere, and at the end of the track you want your money back.

Anyone who thinks Sub 6 and Eskimo aren’t stop-start enough will love Perlook’s The 80s Are Over. There are snare-rolls aplenty here, the stopstarts are so frequent I’d estimate around 20% of the track to be silent; what we want is for 100% of it to be silent, but then of course John Cage would sue.

In-Panix’s Atomic Fashion has some interesting ideas floating around in the mix, but as soon as he remembers he’s supposed to be making psytrance, and falls into that f*ing formula-pattern again, it all goes immediately to shit. Bad sounds, bad progression, bad luck.

Insomnia’s Feel The Vibe is evidently misnamed, as there’s nothing at all to feel here. Yoti’s Forced Busy has the worst intro I have ever heard: obviously-fake orchestral stabs are randomly prodded in order and a dreadful doesn’t-fit piano over the top adds insult to life-threatening death.

Yoti’s spell holding the prize for worst intro ever doesn’t last, as In Panic’s bad-guitarist-through-bad-amp shows. The guitarist is playing an intro that’s supposed to be interesting, or significant, or whatever, but it sounds like he’s trying his damnedest not to play Babe I’m Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppelin, a record that’s not really great but next to this is the finest piece of music ever.

I have nothing against the people behind this label or their associates, and I delight in reading on Bubble’s MySpace just how much people seem to love them. Fair dues, each to their own.

But it’s just all so pathetic. None of the artists concerned here are musicians; I even feel uncomfortable calling them artists. It’s all trance by numbers, insulting to the intelligence, an endless recycling of old ideas produced by and for people who are basically ignorant.