Not Responding To Light – Dance n Dust

An ambitious project – progressive trance with more live instruments than you can shake a Nord at. While it’s an interesting idea, much of Not Responding To Light falls foul of two styles – jazz and trance – at odds with each other, instead of moulding together to create something unified. The Ride is a funky, positive little groover with these yummy little percussive tweaks and twists sitting over the top of a stable, spacious groove. Milkiness Of Infancy takes a little while to settle into its pace. There’s some live-sounding jazzy piano thrown in, which I respect for being innovative and different but it does sound a lot like it was thrown in as an afterthought; experimental for the state of experimental. The atmosphere of the whole track is fairly moody, fairly dark – but seriously, lose the jazz piano. Competent playing, nice idea, but it sounds uneasy; I’m sure it’s good live but on an album it doesn’t work for me. Similarly: Snakey Wave has the groove just right - as though this is the first time on the album the duo have got the nail on the head. Live sax comes in and out to do its best to ruin what they’re doing; before the tune, in any case, ends with a whimper. I’m sorry, once again I can see what they’re trying to do but in placing flurries from jazz (an innately free, unrestrained music) into progressive trance (an innately rigid, patterned music) is either going to work, or it’s going to sound embarrassingly out of place. Talking of which Pio Pio – let’s take good-sounding backbone and stick frankly awful Hispanic singing over the top. Again, it’s interesting – but I can’t see it working on a dancefloor. And the real shame is in the sheer quality of the backbone – it’s bloody good music, which it sounds like someone has hijacked with daftness over the top. The Feral Kid and Akoha are streets ahead – solid, progressive trance with attitude and class. The latter, in particular, has got good classic-sounding potential. Dreamy in a Vibrasphere way, with unfolding sounds and themes. Pretty much perfect as minimal epics go. Playing For Time is more upbeat, with a skippy-tripiness that’s a pleasure for the ears. Here the jazz suggestions are more like subtle bassy stabs, and it works well – because it doesn’t smother the rest of the track. Rainwashed starts out with good funky paranoia, squelchy noises driving it along. Then the jazz comes in, and largely disintegrates the whole track. The effect is pretty good here, not that the tune survives the jazzattack – I think this is the point. Best track in terms of the conventional take on things is the last one, Ornette’s Nest. Decent layering, nice movement, just about the right amount of discord to keep things on-edge, and the live jazz is confined to the break, so it sounds more like a breath of fresh air than a suffocation. An awkward album, that I really wanted to like – I like jazz and I like trance, but let’s be honest here: the two are much more comfortable bedfellows with the more freeform likes of Haltya and Loopus.