Cosmosis ‎– Contact

With this album bilbo bagginz as he calls himself on his albums presents a variety of sounds & styles. Mostly we venture in psytrance. I am not that familiar with Bill's earlier stuff, but in 2002 he definitely hit a good note!

What Cosmosis does best is keeping things simple and dark and then going from there. Like track 5 Inner Space. This is carried out so effortlessly and smooth, going from intro to build up over mayheem, and then back to deep trance just to start it all over again. Amazing track! And a nice album indeed. You get the impression that Bill's a real nice guy who's all about wanting to make us all move in a happy way. And most of the way steering clear of cheziness. Well, Human Evolution may be border cheesy, built on the Space Odyssey 2001 theme, as it is, it certainly is scarily close! Also Skankadelic falls outside my approvable categories!

But I might just need to get my act together. Listening to track 7 built on the infamous Weird Sick'n Twisted Homer Simpson sample you got your X-dream FX elements, your full on'ish bass, and those breaks that seems to take you deeper than the musical parts. And then off course the sample to fuck your brains up the last bit!

Still, no! Human Evolution is cheese but it's only for 6:14 ;o)

The artwork here also deserves a comment. As with his previous albums, Cosmosis has let an artist do the cover and inlay. Here it is Alex Grey doing the honours. I am not quite sure if I dig all of Grey's work, the religious elements maybe being a little over the top for me, but the artwork here certainly is appealing, even if it may promise a dark journey I don't think Cosmosis is quite delivering all the way ;o) Anyhow, nice work and hats off for including artists in the process from other genres.

I have always thought that Bill Halsey was, and still is a very accomplished creative person. He gave us Moonshine, which was Transient Record's biggest seller. He's a very soft- spoken fellow, and when I met him in 1998, he was quite modest about his work.
At any rate, this album doesn't go back to his older sound (fuller, goa-ey and fantastic), nor does it adhere too much to the newer sound of psy trance (progressive and imitating the Norwegians). Even though I don't think this is his strongest LP, I think credit is due since this is not just another big- name artist who's selling out to the newer prog- psy phenomenon. Bill is one of the last psy trance artists who keeps the back of his ears wet and doesn't sell out. Look at what happened to Infected Mushroom! Thank goodness Cosmosis isn't like them! Weird, Sick and Twisted made it pretty big (it was on SO many comps) but here's his LP and it sounds like Cosmosis, not like psy fodder.
Not my favorite, but I do like that Bill stayed true to his sound.

I have heard comments hear and there expressing a certain about of dissatisfaction with Contact, so I was most definately interested to hear what was new here. The album opens with Contact, a slower mid-tempo number I actually didn't like at first, but with in three listens found myself loving. Compared to previous Cosmosis albums, this track is a bit less densly layered (as the whole album proved to be), but there is still plenty going on. It still sounds like Cosmosis, just a bit clearer and cleaner of a Cosmosis.

Find Your Own Divinity comes up next. Being farmilar with this from the 12" ep it was released on that I already owned, I knew what I was in for. The track is a nice balance between the modern full-on psy production and dancablity, with good melodic work. A nice breakdown in the last third of the track tricks you into thinking it is done before coming back for more. Holographic and Innerspace continue in this same vein and are both solid numbers in and of themselves.

Supernatural gives us another pairing of Bilbo Bagginz (Cosmosis) and Seb Taylor, known to most as Shakta, another one of my favorite psy-artists. Shakta has been in a major tribal prog kick these days and the influence on the track is obvious. The track even features some mainstream vocals, but with a twist in that the lyrics themselves admit that they are "alittle bit cheesy". I can see how a lot of people might dislike this track, but personally I enjoy it. Next up we have the Cosmosis remix of Mumbo Jumbo's well known and loved "Weird Sick 'N' Twisted". Bilbo is one half of Mumbo Jumbo so the remix doesn't massively change the original vibe of the track, although it is expanded upon tremendously. The famous Homer Simpson "Strange, Weird, Sick, Twisted" samples are reworked a bit and then completely tweaked all over the place in a great psy-trance sing-along number.

Human Evolution is where the album goes array. This reworking of the classic number known to most as the theme from 2001 simply doesn't work for me. Possible cheese factors aside, the song just doesn't have much power to it and comes across as simply corny. The now defunct NRG label Tinrib released a limited edition remake of the same theme that was actually very good, so this failure is simply due to Cosmosis not making the most of his material and not an inherent flaw in the source music itself. Skankadelic brings things back with another middle/low tempo range track to close the album out. This track is better than Human Evolution no doubt, but the noodling wahguitar solos and such make the track seem a bit directionless.

End result - I can see why some hardcore Cosmosis fans don't like this album. The Cosmosis sound has changed a little in that it isn't quite as dense and is a lot more polished. Personally I like the first 7 tracks a lot and have no problem with the "new improved" Cosmosis. The last two tracks completely throw the vibe of the album off in my opinion, but 2 bad tracks out of 9 is a lot better than I can say for a lot of albums these days which only have maybe 2 good tracks total. 7.5/10