Emotion Chaos – Time Stretch

This is a bit of a puzzling album. Echotek’s (nicely produced) second album is full of a glistening, liquid sound that’s twisty yet flowing. When it works, it’s brilliant – but when it doesn’t, it just sits there being awkward. And occasionally, downright annoying. Too often, tunes will build and build, with energy flowing out of them, before dropping into a sort of nothing, bare-bones neo-fullon, which done once is clever, but over several tunes becomes a bit tiresome. Mr Easter opens brilliantly, with a bassline dropping in at the perfect point, driving things along until it all suddenly collapses in and comes alive. It’s a spacious, breezy morning groove with plenty of magnetism. A Living Monitor is driven along by a great, distinctive noise that sounds a bit like one of those cow-moo things you turn upside down. Sort of thing. It gets quite messy before hitting a good break, and you want it to get messy again… but it doesn’t. So Long So Far is quirky, with an unmemorable giving way to a very nice, bottom-heavy groove that picks up didiprinter lines that get warped and zapped with electro tinges. What follows (forget the sample coming back in) is a glorious electrobreaks soundclash moment… classy, and I’m dying to hear this on a big rig. Again, it doesn’t quite explode like I want it to, but that midsection is sheer class, and you’ve gotta love the way the bottomend’s funk sits against the straight, regimented topends. The Way We Like It starts out with a generally muddy, brooding bottom end that progresses into a more airy section, that sounds all the more energising for what’s come before it, but at the breakdown (once again) it goes breakbeat, then builds really nicely and threatens to hit the roof, and just when you want it to it fails you… Barring the vocal, Emotion Chaos is a great tune, moody and analogue, with just the right amount of topend keeping it alive. There’s plenty of changes, with the best one for me being right after the breakdown. Here, Echotek’s style works to dazzling effect – that change sweeps you off your feet, even despite the best attempts of the vocal and a guitar to sod things up completely. One of the greatest releases of energy in quite some time. Back To Mind is a more standard slab of fullon, with an assortment of fullon noises before a top-end melod-E comes in, while the bottom end retreats, then filters in, then crashes together. Setup Con.Com is the most basic tune on here, you can almost see the music pouring out of your speakers and hitting that base chakra, lifting up that energy form the bottom. It’s rootsy, it’s deep, it just doesn’t work on the higher levels as some of the other tunes on here. Skip straight on to Deep To Tiv, where with a more progressive take he lets the sounds move some more. The sounds are fine but the vocal… “feels so good, something something something.” I mean this is a corking tune, with great movement, completely spoiled by the vocal. Tenner for an instrumental mix please. Closing track Electro Funk does exactly what it says on the tin, fine if a bit muddled with too many noises going on at once. All in all, the two corkers here don’t prop up an entire artist album. At the start, you’re excited and want to listen to where it’s going to take you. By the end, odds are you’re a bit annoyed; but you’ll keep going back to those decent tracks. Patchy.