“Essential Mix”

Pete Tong

Compare to: Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox,
Sasha and Digweed

***

The soundscape of electronic music as of late has been deluged with the ever-popular music format known as trance, or to be more exact, progressive trance. It is the blending of many genres, with a heavy dose of house’s funky beats, and techno’s abstract rhythms.

This trend is kept up in the next installment of the “Essential Mix” series, this time mixed by BBC Radio One host and music mogul Pete Tong. The “Essential Mix” series is a group of mixed albums from featured DJ’s such as DJ Skribble, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and DJ Icey.

The mix is littered with rhythms and tracks that are borderline repetitive, but still manage to remain fresh.

In keeping with his European roots, Tong does little to craft the tracks as his own on the album, and merely mixes one track into another. He allows the songs to speak for themselves.

Tong begins the album with Rui Da Silva’s “Touch Me,” a hit in the United Kingdom but a song that still remains very underground in the United States. From there, he lays out a blueprint for any progressive house or trance DJ to follow. Most of the tracks stay toward the funky side of the progressive genre.

The track “Drums 4 Better Daze” by Lovesky is a demonstration of Tong’s more experimental side. Featuring the traditional drum tracks found on darker songs like those of Adam Beyer, Tong uses it to craft a lighter tone.

Another standout song is “Intensify” from Way Out West. Though normally a duo of house DJ’s, Way Out West allowed its darker Bristol roots to influence this track. From that, Tong moves into two of the best songs on the album, “Deliver Me” from Sister Bliss featuring John Martyn and “Chase the Sun” from Planet Funk.

These songs stand out primarily for the excellent mixes that Tong uses to move from song to song, but also for their wonderful production. “Chase The Sun” features a beautiful female vocalist mixed with horns and other instruments that, when added together, will send chills down the spine of someone who’s just listening to it for the first time.

Though this album does demonstrate Tong’s abilities as a DJ, it is not anything that will standout over time. As the album progresses, it becomes rather repetitive to listen to. Fans of the genre, however, will enjoy the mix, but the common listener will probably be bored.

“New Killer America”

Skrape

Compare to: Boiler Room, Deftones

* 1/2

Let’s see, a purposely misspelled name and an album full of one-word song titles. Must be another nu-metal band.

Rising out of the Orlando music scene, Skrape is just one of the dozens of hopeful young metal acts to release a new album every month.

The problem is that to be noticed, a band either has to do something different from what everyone else is doing, or at least be better at what the other bands are doing. And unfortunately on “New Killer America,” Skrape isn’t able to accomplish this.

They pretty much go bad right from the beginning. In fact, “What You Say,” the first track of the record is also probably the worst song on the album. There is really one reason for this, “What You Say” is screamed a total of 34 times during the three and a half-minute song. Needless to say, this makes the song come across as rather repetitive and boring.

After that, almost every song is the same as choruses are repeated as many times as possible through every song. And if they aren’t just downright repeated, they are just rehashed or chopped up to try and fool listeners into thinking that they came up with different lyrics.

Vocalist William Keeton pretty much sticks to the same style on the entire album. Whiny, soft-spoken verses that build into an irate, yowling chorus. A page that is taken straight from the book of the Deftones’ Chino Moreno. “Sunshine” and “Broken Knees” are impeccable examples of this.

The main problem with Skrape isn’t that they aren’t talented. Michael Lynchard’s guitar work is solid, as is everyone else’s in the band. But the song writing is weak. From the opener to the closing track, “Blow Up,” things just sound the same.

Lynchard’s guitar, although strong, is also tedious. After a couple songs into the record, it’s hard to tell one song’s riff from another.

Maybe metal music should enforce a bring it new, bring it better, or don’t bring it at all rule to weed through the endless amounts of bands. But then again, someone gave all these bubble- gum-pop acts a chance, so why not give Skrape a chance?