A surprise for me this time, to be reviewing this among releases that usually focus on the full on realm. Zenon Records already was pretty minimal, but now they’ve surely taken the road of minimal techno with this release, and they sound all the better for it. From the dry beats of Moses to the more dark territory of Sensient and the funkier feelings that One Tasty Morsel manages to conjure up, this is a great ride all the way through. New artists are blended with already known ones here. One might be lead to believe that artists like Motive, Grouch, Sourone, Circuit Bent, Muggi Dane and Tristan Boyle would pale between names like Sensient, Krumelur or Moses. This is definitely not the case here though. For example, Motive rams the stuff home with Dusty Nostrils (T5, a track that sounds a lot like the “Minilogue” album from Son Kite) and from there it’s on to other minimal techno gems all the way through to the end. Now, since I like minimal techno a lot, I might be a little biased towards this, but so be it. This is one compilation (and label for that matter) that deserve praise for always releasing what they believe in. And it has to be said: this IS psychedelic and actually comes closer to ‘trance’ than most stuff these days. Full on has become increasingly party material, but this stuff really manages to hit home with the hypnotics. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good full on CD and simply love progressive and more commercial trance as well. But to me, hypnosis, a sense of losing oneself, has always been the true meaning of trance. And that’s where these tracks really manage to reach. Some are more funky, some are more dry minimal, some darker, but they all have the hypnosis element in them. Some are even funny (Mega Condensor, T6, springs to mind with the great samples). So kudos to Sensient for compiling this compilation and finding these tracks for us. To top it all, even though these tracks are all minimal, they’re really different from each other. Further praise to the mastering (by SunControlSpecies) and to the great artwork. |
