Artifakt - The Magus

Well I was never too impressed by the first Artifakt album but the second one blew me away so much I felt the need to share it with my friends and family, even buying extra copies for them. Hearing that there was a third album made me really hope that Artifakt would be one of those artists that just got better and better and this album has not just lived up to my expectations but actually surpassed them.

Well starting from the horrible sample at the start of the first track LCD this album gets infinitely better. The pure funkiness of the first track with the deep electronic orchestral influences make this short intro a great one.

The next track Bulk, also starts off in less than impressive fashion sounding like a glitchy minimal nightmare but it slowly evolves into a really nice deep quirky. The sci-fi samples towards the end are some of the best I've heard and really add a deep darkness too the music.

Crystal is another techno influenced track with a lot of spacey effects in it in such a glitchy random way that on paper looks awful but manages to work here most wonderfully. The guitar at the end of it just punctuating it all.

Psylocibin is a high octane track with touches of eastern melody but dominated by tech and glitch.
Macbeth has some Shakespearean samples and a really old world feel in it's brief insurgency.

The Magus, the title track embodies the album so far for me. It's a mix of all the tracks before it. It's energy, it's glitchy randomness and it's deep feeling. The piano section feels like it's going into some classical concert before the electronic atmosphere covers everything and the dark sample drags the atmosphere down into the catacombs of the mind.

Viagra Bastard Spawn is a bastard of a track. The synths are all over the place and the rolling bassline while quite ordinary is one of the best fitting I've ever heard. It fits around everything really well and everything else is as random as possible. Great stuff!

Gather is one of the best tracks I've heard in years. It feels classical at the beginning leading into to crazy glitch and then blending into a mix of the two. The electronic feel of course wins out but there is always that underlying feel from years past in it. The mix culminates in the end into such a weird mix of classical energy. Fantastic.

The Probe tries to be spacey with it's star like melodies and Space Odyssey samples. It initially seems to fail after trying so hard but manages to glitchily go deeper with what would have been a spacey atmosphere twisted into a weird hyperspace anomaly. The sci fi samples might seem a bit obvious but they fit perfectly and add to this dancefloor sci-fi brilliance.

No Present starts as a simple melodic full on track but creates deep journey like feelings with strings and deep bass Throughout most of the track. There are guitars in this but they get almost completely overlooked as they fit in rather than destroy the music. It's a good feeling. Later on they become more obvious but never shit.

The Pole may be the energetic culmination of the whole album with the beats driving and the bassline in perfect sync with the melody and the beats as well as the synths. Great stuff all sound as you'd expect.

So I was expecting the follow up to Artifakts II to be good but to be honest I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.
Don't listen to anyone but yourself. Take people's recommendations, try the CD and hear for yourself. It's even better than the street says.
Get it now, it's one of the most enjoyable albums you'll have heard in years I'm sure of it.