Chemisphere

Tristan is one of my favourite producers ever. The very start of Audiodrome still does things to me that hardly any other music does – and with Substance, you’ve got right there a two-album set of some of the most diverse, individual, and unique psychedelic electronic sounds ever committed to record.

This, coupled with the fact that Tristan is an immensely nice guy, makes it very difficult and – if I can be honest, rather tearful – to report than this album is weak.

Aside form his production work, Tristan is probably better known in recent years for his DJ’ing. If you’ve been to any big European festival, chances are you’ve seen Tristan play. And if you’ve seen Tristan play, chances are he played the closing set, belting them out and rinsing every last drip from the soundsystem.

It always puzzled me why his DJ sets – typically a maelstrom of peaktime stormers, laid end-to-end like some dervish-friendly trance patio – were so different to his albums.

To be honest, I was never really sure if he ever DJ’d his own material; something that’s refreshing, if you’ve spent a week at a festival hearing big acts play their own tracks.

A few years ago Tristan messed up his ear and had to retire from DJ’ing. I’m wondering whether this health-imposed sabbatical has had an impact on his production. Could it be that he wants his live set to capture that end-of-a-festival peak moment, now that he’s unable to DJ for the final four hours?

Whatever, I expected good things from this release, and the Nano press machine certainly aided the pre-release salivation. I wanted a continuation of the dark, edgy paranoia of Audiodrome, but instead here we have Cheech & Chong samples (No Guarantee), generic fullon (top culprit Dream Machine), and bilious guitar (Terrordactyl.)

Spiritual Excitation has a good groove to it, the drop on Focus is nice, and the first half of If Only is up there with his vintage stuff – but other than that, it’s deeply disappointing stuff.

In a climate where we’ve just had cracking albums from Mr Peculiar and AMD, this sounds like a step backwards. It pains me to say all this, by the way. Like I said, Tristan is one of my favourite producers of all time, ever since a Science Fiction at the Fridge in 1997 (not that you asked), and a bloody nice chap.

But good reviewing must be done objectively and with factors such as those firmly parenthesised. And I’m afraid, on that basis, Chemisphere just doesn’t cut the mustard.