Brazinglish EP

One of the things that I love most about this digital revolution we’ve witnessed (reasonably) recently is the return to the EP or, as your Dad used to call it, the twelve inch.

How many times have we come across an album and thought, there just aren’t enough ideas here to justify a 70-minute CD? How many times have you gone out and bought a whole album just to get one or two tracks?

I put it to you that one of the problems faced by psytrance over the last few years has been caused by exactly this. Dance music as a supergenre has always be driven by individual tracks; whether that’s an Armand Van Helden anthem, a Soulwax bootleg, a Carl Craig remix, whatever.

Psychedelic trance used to follow this mould tightly enough. The anatomy of older anthems like The Only Process or Let’s Turn On can be tracked from an initial 12” vinyl release, to subsequent compilation releases, to album releases that ensure that everyone that needs the track has the track and more importantly, that they go mental whenever they hear it played out.

Somewhere along the line it became acceptable to release a whole album’s worth of material. Padding out those two standout tracks with filler, sticking a downtempo track on the end, calling it an album, and we all thought this was perfectly reasonable.

Is it really any wonder so many of us flicked two fingers up to psytrance?

While a return to a smaller, easier-to-digest format might not be the holy grail to which I appear to be alluding, it should mean a couple of things. Firstly, less fodder: the Beatport generation cherry-picks, and neither artist, label, customer nor retailer benefits from there being an excess of cherries.

Secondly, there’s a greater chance of that strange, alien thing becoming a reality again: the anthem. That recognisable belter of a tune that rocks dancefloors worldwide.

All three tracks on this EP are good. One of them is very good indeed. The beauty of the digital format is that you’re free to go ahead and browse online and work out which one you like best, so you no longer need Psyreviews.

I’m saying nothing here about the quality of production in the tracks; nothing about how ballsy and breakdown-free the music is; nothing about how this is probably pound-for-pound the best dancefloor collaboration in recent years.

Whether you’re rejoicing at good music or rejoicing at a return to a digestible, realistic format, Brazinglish is solid shit.