Haldolium Be Real Freeform (Germany)

I’m going to be honest with you here – because I always am – and tell you straight up that this is trance with vocals. But not in a Euro, Ian Van Dahl way; nor in an Underworld way; or an Element Way; or an Infected-Mushroom’s-last-single way either. The jury’s still out on whether the whole vocal trance thing’s a good idea or not, and this is best seen as a key piece of evidence in the trial. Title track be real kicks things off in a positive light; a nice linear trance groove with an interesting, if a little over-emphasised, digital vox loop telling you to be real in a Tim Leary sort of way. In The Wind works less well, the vocal from what sounds like Tori Amos but probably isn’t, and the vocal seems at odds with the rest of the tune. This problem isn’t present on Feel, which has a kind of Depeche Mode, industrial pretechno feel to it that betrays Haldolium’s roots; the vocal hook hovers around and about a very nice techno backbone, and while the melody and lyrics struck me first as being silly, I’ve had it in my head for the best part of the week so they must be doing something right. Serial is the first tune that smacks you of being club-friendly; the vocals are more like sound effects, sitting in the breakdown like sonic butter – and the tune has a lot of energy. 2nd Movement falls into the trap that trance has fallen into countless times over the years – using orchestral stabs, and wounding like the theme music to the TV News; one day I’ll release a compilation album of tunes that do just that to explain properly what I mean. The Journey features a vocoder, which is just wrong in my book. The music’s alright but the vocoder there makes my blood boil, it sounds like a duet between Cher and Steven Hawking… actually that would be pretty good for a party novelty record, but you see what I’m getting at… vocoders belong back in the dustbin of disco where daft punk found them. Being Boiled has a laid back vibe with those industrial vocals again, though the pitch is awkward somewhere between sofa and dancefloor… X-Brass is a pure slice of German techtrance heaven, with some added sax parts that seem to take its relevance away… my thoughts again are that this would empty a dancefloor unless you dropped it at exactly the right time. Finally b/w, the obligatory chilled track, is full of wicked ideas (antimelodies, almost accidental sounding resonances, psychedelic keychanges and a wonderfully weird smell) and it manages to get away with every single one of them. The main worry with this release is what they’re trying to do – it’s certainly not a dancefloor album, and around half of it would be good played at home. All in all, a rather perplexing and alienating release.