sadida's Full Review: Beautiful Strange by Bedrock
What is this thing? Is it a single - not really. Well then it's an album right - well no. An EP then - kind of. It's 75 minutes of music, but only 4 different tracks. Whatever it is, it's good!
Beautiful Strange - The title of this release also happens to be the first 5 tracks. You get the original, plus mixes by Bedrock (of course), Moonface, Rui da Silva, and Voyager. You couldn't have come up with a better title than Beautiful Strange. It describes the track perfectly. A beautiful blend of precise kick, swirling synth, and strange elements layered over the top here and there. The original is easily my favorite. It's a 12 minute spectacle that has to be heard. I liken it to a parade of digital circus animals. Each element is paraded by, exhibiting its signature trait. The tiger slinks past with fierce beats. The seal comes by on a wagon bouncing an audible ball of synth. Even the elephant thunders by with a bit of swag and a trunk full of space bass.
The Moonface mix is well paced and interesting. It would be most useful towards the beginning of a DJ set. It's good for listening too, but its limited set of elements grows a little tiresome towards the end. Overall, it's a strong mix and I look for lots of good things out of Moonface in the future. The opening of this track reminds me strongly of Sasha and BT's Ride (yes, I know the name they used to release it on Yoshi.toshi. If you don't know the name they used, go look it up, you'll have a nice laugh). It uses a tick-tick-tick loop that sounds similar.
Rui da Silva mix - Wow, you might have to tweak the eq a bit on this one if you value your woofers. It has a backing bass track that just rumbles. Good stuff.
To stick with the "sounds like Sasha" theme, the start of Voyager's Platinum remix sounds like the intro to Sasha's Xpander. The similarity fades fast though.
Once the intro is over, we drop into a dirty twisting groove with quite a bit of eq shift. Things slide in and out, providing for a bit of controlled chaos. Let's just make it easy and call this one *bangin* :)
Finally, to round off the Beautiful Strange mixes, we have Bedrock's Ambient Beats. Ahh pure bliss. Soft, yet purposeful. I like this mix.
Forge - This one sounds a bit like FSOL. If you've never heard of Future Sound of London, you might enjoy checking out their ISDN release. Anyway, back to Forge, I like it a lot. You can't really dance to it,
but that's fine. Try this when you have a bad day at work. Come home, poor yourself a lemonade (vodka is optional), turn off the lights, and put this track on. Later, rinse, repeat if necessary. The smooth flow should take the edge off the worst of days.
Voices (Saeed & Palash Mix) - Yawn. Parts of this mix sparked my attention. I wanted to get into it, but alas, it could not hold my attention. In fact the "Voices" sample got downright annoying. This is a very ho-hum mix in my opinion.
Who are Saeed & Palash by the way? This is the first I have heard of them. Can anyone post a comment with some more info on them? I hate to dismiss a group based on a single remix.
And finally, we come across Heaven Scent (POB's Seismix). A decent mix. It fits well with this release. It greets you with a driving beat that says "hop on, I'll take you there", and follows that up with some nice break downs that keep the hands-in-the-air feel of the original Heaven Scent.
What else should I check out?
* Sasha - Xpander EP
* Anything by Way Out West
* FSOL - ISDN (for the slower stuff)
* Futureshock - Sparc
* The Movie Groove for its fantastic leveraging of the original version of Heaven Scent. Digweed even makes an appearance in it!
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