Reader’s Warning: Another in a growing series of rants. You know what to expect.

Ab initio, I must say that I experienced a certain amount of trepidation when I was asked to opine on this album (or do you say “CD”?). And, my sense of prognostication being true to form, my worst fears were soon to be realized.

This review of Paul Oakenfold’s Tranceport is the counterpart to ad-dollar’s aka “Swami Steve” review (or, non-review, as the case may be) of Peter Gabriel’s album entitled Peter Gabriel—the first one, with “Solsbury Hill”, not the second one with “D.I.Y.”, and not the third one, with “Games Without Frontiers”, as if you guys didn’t already know that.

And, needless to say, this is another in the many pairings of the “You Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine” write-off aka “Write-off Part Deux” or some such, the participants also including keithpruitt, kristinafh, buffoonery (hey, that’s me!), ad-dollars (that’s the other guy), repulsemonkey, aggiebrett, shilmafone, kidhendrix, brotherman, e_burrell, kcfoxy, thevoid99, danielrf, adjensen, sleestakk, obiwanjabroni, saxguy, fm_hunter, chezon, pezking, matta75, dchefsours, annexation, monssfisch, kuuleimomi, flamepillar, dantesguide, sordid-1, magenta321, jennifernorth, jennjoy, gamblinfamily, vemartin, sparkospunky, kris-kochanski, given2flymike, roheblius, divad23 and monnie1976, so while you’re here, go read their reviews, because they’re all pretty entertaining, and besides I hear most of them need the money.

Anyway, my partner ad-dollars contacts me first, tells me I’m his partner, and says he listens either to speed metal or electronica so which do I prefer? Now, I despise metal music, and my distaste for that music goes all the way back to when dinosaurs ruled the earth in the early ‘70’s and on the airwaves you heard pretty bad stuff by Uriah Heep and Deep Purple and Black Sabbath (blecch) although Blue Oyster Cult had their moments and I even saw them in concert once although I don’t remember much about it because I was pretty hammered and that music has only got worse since then so I had no choice but to go with electronica.

I got my revenge by giving HIM the Gabriel album, which he never even could find, so take that, hah!

Now, I actually had some hopes that I would like this stuff. I’ve been a prog rock guy since the Fragile album came out when I was in 8th grade and then I started listening to ELP and Genesis and then really got into King Crimson and I thought, OK, this is doable, and besides, it can’t be any worse than Kraftwerk’s Autobahn album (which was a big hit for, like three weeks back in ’75 or so), or maybe speeded up Tangerine Dream like when their Phaedra album came out and actually got some play time on the prog rock stations and they even did the soundtrack for the old vastly underrated James Caan movie Thief.

So, as you can see, I bring some pretty strong bona fides to this operation as well as a small sense of optimism. Even more, when I was in college I was in a this fraternity some members of which were seriously into recreational pharmacology when they weren’t committing petty larceny or grand theft in at least one case and some of the boys would do large quantities of downers—Quaaludes being the drug of choice—and tune into this type of stuff—when they weren’t doing uppers and listening to the Allman Brothers or the first Zeppelin album, although they occasionally listened to jazz to the point where one guy had the first twelve bars the trumpet part of Miles Davis’s classic “Four” painted on his wall.

I had never heard of Paul Oakenfold, so I thought, let’s check out an epinion and, what do you know, my pal ad-dollars has a concert review on file, ominously entitled “The two greatest nights of my life -- Ecstasy with Oakenfold”, and I figure, oops not only am I dealing with a true believer here, but smart fellow that I am, I also figure that he don’t mean “Ecstacy” like more forty-year olds mean “Ecstacy,”, but I figure he means “Ecstacy” like most twenty-year olds mean “Ecstacy”, so I figure, uh oh, it sounds like there was a seriously wasted crowd watching this concert, a premonition that was subsequently confirmed to me by my faithful correspondent, who by his own testimony was the only sober person there. And it also turns out the Oakenfold is, like, wow, like the king slash guru slash cat’s meow of—really big “uh oh”—dance slash trance music. So I start steeling myself for the worst, which arrived in spades:

This CD is nothing but electronic disco. Disco! I hate disco!. DISCO! GAHHH!

The opening bars of the first cut, “The Dream Traveler” open promisingly, with a fake chorus and some belching sounds and, think I, this will be OK, kind of like the chorus bits on the first couple of post-Peter Gabriel Genesis albums before they got mediocre and then got REALLY famous and hence really AWFUL.

Nice try, fizzbin, because before you know it, your buddy Paul has swung into a throbbing 4/4 backbeat and little “dink dink” sounds that brings back to mind everything that was smotheringly bad about late 70’s disco dreck and time hasn’t made that stuff sound any better. In short, Tranceport is loaded from stem to stern with endlessly repeated riffs and that incessant backbeat and the usual gamut of percussive noises that are designed to get bodies throbbing together on the dance floor and presumably throbbing in other more comfortable locales once the music has finished.

So let me give you a free caveat from your loyal writer: I don’t recommend using downers while listening to this, unless you intend to use enough to put you in a coma, which on the one hand is a bad idea because you might never wake up or even worse turn into a 21st century version of Karen Ann Quinlan, but on the other hand is a good thing because you won’t have to spend much time listening to this.

But, What I do recommend doing, if you head out to a club and the DJ starts spinning this stuff, is drink a whole p*sspot full of Wild Turkey, because my experience is that guys who drink Wild Turkey get pretty violent, and if you get violent the bouncers will throw you out, which on the one hand is a bad thing because they might hurt you in the process, but on the other hand is a good thing because you won’t be listening to this any more, so it’s a least half of a win-win situation.

OK, I’ve had a few jokes at the expense of Mr. Oakenfold, who I am given to understand is making a whole pile of dough off this stuff. I am also the first to concede that he has a very powerful handle on how to handle all these synthesizers and electronic drum kits and what not, and I’ll also bet that he’d be a pretty good keyboard player if you gave him some decent material to work with.

I’ll also concede —a very tiny concession—that a bit of this is listenable, at least to the average Joe like me. I kind of sort of almost like the third cut, “Tilt v. Paul Van Dyk”, which has a catchy little riff and is almost humorous. “Gus Gus” has also got a few laughs. But these few bright spots are blown out of the water by a horrorshow like “Ascension”, complete with a chick singer who combines the worst of late 70’s new wave queen Deborah Harry (who back then was OK looking but now looks like forty miles of really bad road, like something located in Rwanda or wherever) or that weird babe who sung “Ninety Nine Red Balloons” back in ’83 or so and boy did I want to strangle her let me tell you.

Same thing with “Energy 52”—lots of electronic pounding and smushing noises, or “Lost Tribe”—more electronic pounding and smushing noises, or “Transa”, more of the same, blah blah blah.

So permit me to sum my feelings here, in case you haven’t gotten the point: I don’t like this stuff. It makes the melody lines of Kraftwerk and Hawkwind and that other space age stuff look sophisticated, and that’s saying a lot. But I’m not going to ding it with one star, because if you like dance club music, you’ll like this.

And the other reason I’m giving it two stars is because ad-dollars, that bum, didn’t even listen to the disc I gave HIM to review, because they don’t even CARRY IT in whatever burg he lives in, and he gave it ONE STAR ANYWAY ! HAH!

Now, we all know from reading my long list of rants, that I don’t hold a grudge. Hence, my fair-minded, objective, and nuanced review of Tranceport.

Hope you like it, Steve.

While you’re at it, please check out his very funny non-review of Peter Gabriel, at http://www.epinions.com/content_30195814020/tk_~CB004.1.4

Party on.


Recommended: No

Great Music to Play While: Going to Sleep