What can I say? The guy does good things to me. Brother of Tom "Squarepusher" Jenkinson, he presents a personality filled to the utter brim of relentless off-the-wall humour and down-to-earth passion for all things rave! Famous for inventing Acid Bingo, Acid Darts and the now-legendary Acid Karaoke, there is no limit to his deep-rooted involvement with the analogue old skool crowd of today (check out vids of the Acid Karaoke he hosted at BLOC '09 on YouTube where festival-goers got their chance to wail along to demented pop hits from the likes of Proclaimers, Kate Bush and Bon Jovi; all lovingly reconstructed live on 808s and drum machines).
His latest release "United Acid Emirates" (Feb 2010), his first on the impressive Planet Mu label, can be viewed as a product of meticulous labouring over his psychedelic technicolour layers. As to be expected from the general calibre of his live sets and previous recorded produce (particular personal favourites include the "Pages from Ceephax" sampler on vinyl and the "Ceeland" cassette released last year), the album is no different to previous releases in terms of featuring a number of thundering synth arpeggios all performed and recorded completely with analogue equipment - either knocked off his more profilic and professional brother; or inherited through the ages from various events, geezers and bargain bins. However, what this release as a whole perhaps demonstrates is a more varied approach to representing, intentional or not, different decades of electronic music - from the opening track onwards, the listener encounters a host of soundscapes that could easily have been culled from either the 1989 golden age of rave, the mid-career Kraftwerk era, or even at times the Miami Vice soundtrack.
Punctuated with a number of more downbeat electronic noodlings that hark back even further to the likes of early Yellow Magic Orchestra output, the tracks on this disc have a definite "rave:chillout" divide - a symptom that may have been carried on from the Ceeland casette where one side comprised jungley crotch-thrusting analogue techno, the other an almost bleak and very melancholic collection of soundscapes intentionally made to create a sense of "what it's like to be on a ferry alone out on the North Sea, with the cold wet wind blistering".
Long argument short: this album feels like it could merely operate as a bonus disc to the Ceeland cassette. Where the sad quiet 'Ferry' side tracks of Ceeland are remarkably revelatory in their penetrating frost (see the mp3 link at the bottom) and are collated on a completely seperate side of the cassette should you wish to engage or not, the downtempo tracks on "United" are impulsively planked in the tracklist and only serve the purpose of inescapably getting in the way of the more polished and worthwhile dance pieces.
On that note of polished, however, an interesting issue springs to mind. Where some tracks like "Sidney's Sizzler" and "Arcadian (Castillian II)" sound almost hyperproduced, it works in their favour as the sounds carry a completely DMX Krew quality of melody. For those expecting a disc crammed with sheer raw analogue 200mph action, that's where the more experimental aspect of this album will fail them - as already mentioned, the retro-futuristic production values that have transformed some of his ordinarily half-assed drum machine melodies into almost classical sounding Detroit spar against the style he's famed for: the raw insanity of his Roland collection! Where Ceeland sounds warmingly sloppy but all the way more excited because of that, and his famed "Volume One" functions as a testament to malevolent acid breaks, this latest release unfortunately does not live up to the hype. It's a nice disc with some cracking moments, as all Ceephax escapades will guarantee, and is certainly a not too shabby addition to 2010's discography for analogue veterans. BUT if you're up for buying Ceephax for the first time, I'd heavily recommend "Volume One" on CD as a first choice, especially now that the price has dropped in the last year or so (as far as I understand).
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
Here you can directly download an mp3 file of "Diving Bell", one of the more inspiring downtempo tracks he's recorded - taken from the Ceeland cassette (2009):
http://www.ceephax.co.uk/mp3s/Newer%204/1%20Diving%20Bell.mp3
The completely original and wonderfully detailed music video debut from Ceephax - "Sidney's Sizzler" on United Acid Emirates (2010):
Another Ceephax directed video for "Trabzonspor", one of the more downbeat tracks from United Acid Emirates (2010):
An audio-only upload of the very Cybotron-sounding "Emotinium II", again from United Acid Emirates (2010) - a real highlight:
And to finish, check out "My Way of Life", his ridiculously lame take on hip-hop - taken from the Ceeland cassette (2009):
No comments:
Post a Comment