This third compilation from D-A-R-K Records has a theme to it, as do most of their releases. Anyway, Ra-Con-Teur means an old form of verbal art essentially practiced in countries to entertain the crowd and gather people in a festive ambience. This is conveyed through the fact that there’s a lot of diversity on here, even if most of the tracks retain a dark atmosphere. We’re talking dark psytrance here, but very diverse. There’s slower stuff on here that reminds me of Xenomorph’s slower works like Jam on Zed’s Into the Woods (T1); there’s fast and hard stuff here (Devic- T2, Troglodytes- T9 & Crazy Ducks- T10); spooky stuff (Electrypnose’s Life is a Sinus- T4), really psychedelic stuff (Ilmush & Malice in Wonderland- T 6 & 7); and the plain dark regular psytrance (the rest). All in all this is great stuff. Especially the Electrypnose track deserves a mention. Man, is that great or what? Even the title blows your socks off. Life is a Sinus. It can’t get more sinister, can it?? What I particularly like is that D-A-R-K managed to give the compilation a real story-like feeling, with all the diversity. It feels like a whole, like these tracks were really carefully hand picked to serve up a whole psychedelic dark course that you won’t soon forget. Even the cover artwork deserves a mention. It’s not very often that you see a cover with fantasy elements that’s done right. But here, it’s great and somehow it really fits the music. When playing this you think of dark forests, mist creeping, shadows in every corner, sinister rustling leaves… Hey, you get the picture. But don’t think for a second that you’re in the weird Finnish kind of psytrance here, no, this is as dark and kicking as releases from say, Temple Twister Records or Insomnia. If this label can keep this up then they’re going to belong in my favourites list for sure. |
