In Trance We Trust – Phonokol

Second album from Sesto-sidekick in “mostly quite good” shocker. Recorded with Aquatica, Deeper Level is a pretty stellar bit of rinse-u-like trance mania material. It’s tight as hell, with peaks and builds that do just what you want them to. Occasionally there’s a little more topend lead than I’d like, but it retains that good ol’ Gataka vibe of smacking you in the gut and then throwing you upwards. Blast from The Past is about 85% the same chords and progression as The Eurhythmics’ Sweet Dreams; fair enough (especially as its nowhere near as appalling as GMS’ satan-fellating re“work” currently doing the rounds). Again, what’s undeniable here is how damn tight and smooth it is. It’s not going to win any awards for envelope-pushing, but it’s exceptionally good at what it does. Night Become A Day (sic) takes a while to get where it’s going, but suddenly at about the five minute mark it explodes into a huge riff… reminds me of a more mature, less destructive 3D Vision sound. Viva La Mexico is a belter: it grabs you by the balls, then there’s plenty of low-end twist and swagger going on to keep you interested. The midsection is perfect, perfect fullon escalating leisurely up to a fuckin’ awesome main run, with huge noises, huge thunks, and class. How To Create A Monster has one of the tasiest basslines I’ve heard in a while. Analogue as hell, it’s got a kinda swooping to it that gets the acid house part of by brain tingling nicely. There’s then a lot of activity in the lowend that a dancefloor responds well to; a load of 303 on the peak, that a dancefloor responds well to; and a huge, huge, obscene fucking drop into a 303 overdrive main run: which, you guessed it, a dancefloor will respond to incredibly well. It’s a cracker of a record, but marred by one thing: that amazing final run is over too soon. Ten years ago you would have that run about two minutes in, then it would go places from there… Here, by the time that main run’s finished, you’ve lost interest: which is just as well, because the track’s more or less done. Gataka then teams up with Estavo & Gabriel Mafra for Weird 60s Experience, which is hilarious but also god awful: think an Israeli Status Quo rhythm guitar dropped over 145bpm beats while a crap, crap, crap guitar solo is played live over the top. I guess tere had to be a shit guitar track on here somewhere: it’s become the 2005 equivalent of the shit album-closing slow one. Gata & Perplex’s Down To Earth is more or less the same acidy energy as How To Create A Monster, before picking up dreadful cringetastic eurotrance highends. Gataka then teams up with Jo on vocals for The Mind Twister, a more morningy-sounding track that loses its way with great flair. It’s nice and builds well, then the vocal comes in and things (technically speaking) go tits up. One Way Ticket adds some welcome funk, then somehow it manages to go from sounding different to sounding like everything else: skip this track and listen to one of the earlier ones again. Finally, you’ve got Isralizer which is bloody nice. Gataka eases off the accelerator, uses clean and clear sounds that twinkle and hover around the main thrust of the music, and makes it sound like Mylo doing psytrance. Really. Ten tracks then, seven of which are pretty decent. It’s a better artist album than I hoped, and while at times it falls a bit short of your greatest expectations at times, there’s some great moments here. Impressive.