Cyberdelica

Compiled by Trancelucent and Psymag.com’s Homsy, nine tracks of what I suppose we must continue to call neo-fullon. Noga opens up with Intelligent Species, with metallic noises rising and falling around an efficient fullon bassline. The breakdown brings in some happier noises, and off it goes. Bizarre Contact vs Dooper Doopler’s Hallucinating is nice, the vaguely jazzy acoustic guitar at the start is fresh, and the opening section moves nicely with smooth, even topends. At the break, it thunks in like a pile of bricks, and mashes things nicely before picking up some melodic touches and lifting its vibe. Aquatica’s The Access Code is characterised by a massive (and I mean massive) breakdown. Other than this, it’s all about the topend. Electro Sun’s Vanilla is a great case for the official psyreviews shoot the guitarist movement – this is a perfect tune wrecked by a compressed, messy electric guitar sound that simply isn’t needed. Sans axe, it would be a fluid and pleasant sunshiney groover. System Nippel have been making quite big waves lately, and Radiance certainly demonstrates their sound: massive, big, huge (and other such adjectives), keeping melody to the front but somehow getting away with it. Although the up / down / up / down movement would lead some to classify it as pilltrance, it’s simply good dance music. Misted Muppet make a welcome appearance with Night Wish, and it rinses. The tune seems to be pulled on by its snares, which is refreshing, and has the effect of pulling-you-in as opposed to pushing-you-along (which most psy seems to do these days). Typical Misted melodies abound, with a thunkhappy kick, but it’s all over too soon. Uriel’s Discobles is a monster built around the “shiny disco balls” sample and is, as such, utterly abhorrent. Quickly on to Paragidma’s Isolated, which works very well indeed with big melodies over a light-yet-kickin’ groove. Finally Visual Paradox vs Bizarre Contact’s Tarim Taof works well with its low-set acid on the way up, and the chord changes are effective if a little on the cheesy side. At the end of the day, while the music here is a good collection of what the neofullon machine is churning out, there’s little here of substance. DJ’s playing this sort of thing will find their melodic arsenal slightly bolstered, but this could have been a lot better.