D-Nox & Beckers - Left Behind

Ah, the comfortability of progressive electronica. Coining the exact difference between psychedelic progressive trance, progressive house/trance and electro house may be quite the task – and a somewhat redundant one! – but label this any way you like. There are a couple of party stompers here.

So, has the psychedelic elements all but vanished on Left Behind? Well, yes. Clearly this appeals more to your average clubgoer with its’ slick electro house approach but myself a faithfull psychedelic follower I can still enjoy large chunks of Left Behind’s steady drive. Sure, the psychedelic crescendos of early Iboga Records aren’t lined up but, damnit, who needs them with this lush bass lines?!

And stil the many details throughout some of the tracks may create the extra layer that can supply a ticket to outer space for an openminded hippie. Let me reiterate. This isn’t in-your-face layer craziness by far but work with the beat, the held back aggressiveness and the many sections in each track and your mind should have a little something to wander away to too.

The biggest problem on Left Behind are the vocal sections. Even the great opener Left Behind offers a stupid vocal section but skip these and Left Behind is if nothing else a very pleasant journey aimed equally well for the club scene and your living room softly mixed as it comes.

Highly recommended for electro house followers and still a safe purchase for the openminded progressive psytrance follower.

D-Nox (Christian Wedekind) & Beckers (Frank Beckers) are 2 seasoned players in the Electronic music scene. Although their first steps can be cautiously called Psy Trance related (D-Nox as the person behind the success of Plastic Park, Tatsu and most recently Sprout Music and Frank Beckers behind his old alias, Space Safari, Export Audio and recently simply Beckers) their current output is very loosely Psy Trance related . Both of them are amongst the most stubborn infiltrators of the Progressive House and Minimal Techno into the Psy Trance scene, a crime that many dreadlocked party goers will swear to never forgive. For the rest of us immortals they brought many interesting directions into the somewhat stale lately Psy scene. Beckers’ Switch 12” was one of the biggest dust raisers in 2005 a surprising success of which was followed by a myriad of remixes ranging from excellent to simply horrible “replace the bassline and raise the BPM bar full-on remixes”. D-Nox in his turn became one of the most demanded DJ’s and became a top crowd pleaser in any respectable summer festival. The two at first collaborated on Air Bureau’s We Shine remix and soon afterwards released a few 12” hits, notably My Number One, You’re a Star, Memory Cell with Amo and Navas and Naked Punch.
With this album that followed the great success of the singles I am guessing they had 2 options. One is to continue their well established sound and release another album that will copy the hits and will staple their already prominent presence. The other and the harder option was to try to create something new. Luckily they have chosen the second option and attempted to create something more minimal, more abstract and deeper than anything they have created before. My first impressions from this album were quite disappointing to say the least. The album sounded like a bunch of loops that move along with no visible progression and on top of that a few tracks had some of the cheesiest vocals I have been exposed to since I have stopped listening to mainstream electronic music. But… for some reason I just couldn’t stop listening to it, little by little understanding the little things that actually evolve, the little but fat grooves and those typical German percussion tricks just made me want more. After few weeks of raping these tracks over and over I came to the inevitable and fair conclusion that this album is the shit, but not for everyone. This album has almost no connection to Psy Trance and as such this review’s appearance on Isratrance is unusual to say the least and misplaced to be fair. Yet, since those guys’ music is a very frequent visitor in our parties and tracks from this album are already shaking the dancefloors as I type, this review shall appear here, and also shall be hailed as it is the best non Psy Trance album that you’ll probably be hearing in all the best parties this summer.