B-Zet - When I See...

i agree with the above comments... a strange release, even for Eye Q! i love b-zet's remix talent, especially on older tracks like My Name is Barbarella and later tracks like Yello - To the Sea. he has a true talent for building off of other peoples' work, but his own productions are very hit or miss with me.

you have tracks like 'The Closed Eye View' which is one of the most well known ambient tunes from the Eye Q / Recycle or Die catalogues, and it is an amazing piece of work. then you compare that to this album and are left wondering what happened. "Playing Children" is the most "Eye Q" track on here, with nostalgic, dreamy synths and consistent, straightforward 4/4 percussion. if there were more tracks like that on here, it would have been a hit. unfortunately, it's one of those albums where i have to skip through tracks, which is not usual with Eye Q.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one real soul/pop song on this album, namely 'everlasting pictures (right through infinity).' I pretty much like this song, although it sounds quite "commercial."

There is also another german re-release (0630-12975-2) of this album with a monochrome blue artwork. On that album, 'african mirror' is replaced by 'caught within (gonna miss you),' another soul song, which I don't appreciate very much. Moreover, the track lengths differ a little.

My favourite track on this CD is the title track which demonstrates B-Zet's talent for creating soulful and emotional ambient tracks. It reminds me a bit of his remixes of Sven Väth's 'ballet-dancer' as well as Stina Nordenstam's 'little star'. Two other tracks/songs that you really should know if you're a B-Zet fan.

Weird release from Steffen Britzke. On the one hand we get lush, soulful ambient/trance soundscapes like only B-Zet can do, and then suddenly the listener is whisked into pseudo soul/pop experiments with pompous diva vocals which just sound horribly out of place. When I See.. seems to have a hard time finding out what sort of release it wants to be: underground and faithful to the Eye Q-roots or pop music somewhere in the soul/r'n'b-spectrum.

Despite the rather schizophrenic nature of this album, tracks like "Le Tonnere Dans Les Plumes Voir" and the title track still make this album worth getting. Just remember to make use of your CD player's program-function (or just extract the good tunes onto your Ipod/mp3 player/whatever).