Serotonia – Solstice

Los Angeles-based Quadra has caused considerable ripples across the global trance scene with this album, showcasing a sound that’s simultaneously light and deep, full of flurries and surprises. Become Aware kicks off with a nice, airy groove with plenty of spaces between the sounds. The cute production rounds off a bouncy bassline, and the movement in the filters is reminiscent of the old goa sounds of yesteryear. External Pleasure has a busier bassline which picks up clatters and stabs, gaining energy and momentum as it goes, and displaying Quadra’s skill in creating a track with unquestionable atmosphere and drive. The Tunnel is ultra-shivery morning trance; beer in one hand, spliff in the other. After the break, it picks up more energy, more buzz and an anthemic synthline to drive it all onward and upward. Epicycle is a standout, a substantial bottomend is coupled with a lysergic hook, that pulls you right in before foaming over at the top like a rabid, shirtless doofer with a glowstick in every orifice. Nice. Space Flights is centred around a huge breakdown which gives way to a graceful-yet-gnarly run, and Function of Color (sic) is an irresistible call-to-the-dancefloor. The messier, busier fullon of Energy Transport is a large step away from the breezier opening tracks, while Stimulated is proper peak time malarkey. The “I’m on ecstasy” sample is unlikely to please those who believe that the current wave-after-wave pattern of doof is more pilltrance than psychedelic, but you can’t doubt its effectiveness as a positive, kaleidoscopic stomper. Serotonia is more melodic, suited again to the morning dancefloors, with a popcorn-style hook progressing into a shivery final run with a cutsaw synth over schlumpy noises and topend tickles. Obligatory downtempo closer The Ecstasy Of Revelation is perfectly competent, and sort of sums up the feeling you get from the whole album. It’s perfectly decent, very well-produced, and delightfully put together. But after a complete listen, you can’t help but feel like there’s something missing: that non-specific “timelessness” that keeps you coming back time and time again.

Why We Love...

Franz Von Stuck's Tilla Deverieux Depicting Circe. So there I was, with one free day to stomp around Berlin. Which was great, it had been too long since i'd foundmyself in a city i didn't know, entirely left to my own devices (yes) after a hectic couple of days' worth of conferencing, selling, spieling, and generally being good. Without a weekend to get mashed in, and with the only midweek options findable a Tresor party and a Tribute to John Peel indie night, I opted to do my stomping in the day, see the city that had been breathing its cold, icy air on me whenever i'd managed to sneak out for a cheeky fag (subtotal, eighteen minutes of daylight (max) per day. So we decide, ladies and germs, that the day's going to be all about art. Now psyreviews isn't the most cultured person out there -- okay, he knows a John Constable from a December 1989 copy of Readers Wives, and he thinks Tracey Emin's unmade bed was sort of clever in a diverting sort of way -- but in terms of stuffy galleries with all kindsa irrelevant stuff.... nope. Pass the December 1989 copy of Readers' Wives, please. And so, with a travelcard, a pocketmap and a pocketful of employer-supplied €uro's, our hero sets off, first to check an interesting but ultimately empty small exhibition loosely about the colour orange, and then to visit the Neue Nationalgalerie, where he pays his eight euro's, checks his bag and coat, smiles at some women and begins the now-familiar routine of Bimbling About. Occasional beard-stroking, peering at labels, trying to translate bits of German. Some impressive busts (stop that giggling at the back). Some enormous oil paintings depicting battles from... wherever. A still life. Crikey. And then, suddenly and without warning, I saw it: about 15 inches long and high, it was perfectly placed on a diagonalled-off corner of a room crowded with art, but devoid of other people. Per-fucking-fect. Everything around it seemed to fade out of focus. I had a funny feeling in my stomach, which spread to my head, and then around the rest of my body: everything tingled. For a moment I thought my regulation business-hotel breakfast (single-serving everythings, and "I am jack's utter lack of surprise") may have contained a couple of disco biscuits; but no. I had a suspicion I was being "moved." When you're used to being moved by sonic-inputs, becoming moved by visual-inputs is a strange experience. I tried to think of how someone who's usually moved by visual art might feel when exposed to something staggering in the aural category; but whatever. I didn't feel quite the same afterwards. I spent about two hours in what was, I have to say, a pretty damn cool gallery, coming back four times to check this one, small painting out. I tried as hard as I could to commit the artist and title to memory, and scribbled both (incorrectly) on the back of my ticket when i finished up and got out into the world, which for some reason looked and felt a little bit different. And so, there we go. I've put a picture below, but it doesn't do the original justice. How can it? None of the images I've seen online capture the look in her eye; this freaky eye that's filled at once with awe, with apprehension, with admiration, and a sense of fear -- or is it mistrust? And I have no idea why it struck me, why I was drawn to it: maybe there is something mystical in art, in the artistic process, that just sometimes produces such a stirring reaction, if the conditions within and without are just right. But my brother had a rather clearer explanation: he reckons I was drawn to it because it depicts the "ultimate trance bird." I have a feeling he could be right.