Man With No Name ‎– Earth Moving The Sun

Following the 'MOT( Moment Of Truth)' album was never going to be an easy thing to do. I remember having a copy of this album on cassette years ago and so finally heard it once more in crisp, stereo sound at last on CD today. Opinions appear fairly divided on this album, so I aim here to give a detailed analysis of each track and the album as a whole. I must point first though that I am a massive MWNN fan so the results are likley to be somewhat biased.

'Earth Moving The Sun' opens with the deliciously dreamy strains of 'Vavoom!', a brilliant track which harks back to the borderline-cheesy day-glo sounds of 'Floor-Essence' on MOT, though with less bells. An epic track with numerous melodies and the trademark MWNN kickdrum, 'Vavoom!' is a great opening track and eases the listener in gently with its similarity to MOT material. Sadly things go downhill from there.

Track 2 is 'Seratonin Sunrise', quite easily the worst MWNN track ever but one of my personal favourites simply due to its laughable subject matter. Micky Banks yells his way through a kind of Underworld-style spoof of MWNN, which will either make you grin with mirth or cringe horribly. Listen with caution, and probably a good idea to listen alone.

In total contrast to its somewhat frantic, comedic predecessor, 'Camouflage' is a delicate beatless track with a beautful little melody which I doubt I will ever get bored of. Despite this, the track sounds ridiculous after 'Seratonin Sunrise' and as a result, terribly out of place.

Next is 'Own The World', the B-side to the 'Vavoom!' single. The brilliant Goa intro and bassline is ruined however when the track suddenly succumbs to the European trance sound that was typical in 1998, veering off into a ditch near Creamfields at around 5.00 minutes.

Euro-trance fans will therefore highly enjoy the next track, 'The First Day' (Horizon)', a shamelessly trashy trance track with, yep, more vocals. This time however they're just bland and distracting, kinda like listening to a Matt Darey remix of the Pet Shop Boys or something. I seem to remember hearing this track on a Kiss compilation once, which kinda sums it up nicely.

Then there's 'Treacle', a weird dubby track with proto-psybience. The equivalent of 'Azymuth' on MOT, this is probably my favourite track, though I can easily see why people wouldn't like it.

'Possessed' is another mad psytrance stormer in a similar vein to 'Own The World', but with an apalling range of cheesy sounds and weird duck-like noises. Though this track in particular hasn't dated that well, it's certainly likely to strike a chord with psytrancers.

'Parallel Universe' on the otherhand reverts back to MWNN's traditional dark Goan sound, similar to 'Teleport'. However, things don't really build to anything other than bland melodies which clearly show influences from Astral Projections' 'People Can Fly' and MWNN's remix of 'Octopus' by Art of Trance. Nevertheless, good.

Next is 'Spaghettification', a stupidly short track that sounds unfinished in every sense. It doesn't do anything, is totally forgettable and lacks any real depth at all.

'Tarantula' however is a decent acid trance track which, like the ttle suggests, creeps up slowly and releases acidic riffs and impresive melodies. At times it doesn't sound that typical of MWNN's sound, but by this point in the album things seem so muddled up in style it's hard to pinpoint any specific Freeland sound at all.

And finally there's 'The Breech', a brilliant track that essentially re-arranges the formula of 'Vavoom!' to conclude things.

So overall? Hmmm. Compared to MOT this album really lacks any drive or flow. Stand out tracks are good, but with so many ideas squeezed into an hour of music, it's sometimes hard to work out where Martin Freeland wanted to take this album. In conclusion, I really think this is one album that benefits from the iPod shuffle. Each track could sound awesome in isolation or amongst others in a playlist, and the ones released as singles are generally excellent. I'd recommend any owners of this CD to do just that and avoid playing this in one go. Moment Of Truth however, has yet to have been followed up successfully.

Man With No Name was one of my first ever musical 'crushes'. His easy digestible and recognizible sound got me hooked on old school goa trance before I even knew such a term existed. The larger than life attitude he put into his tracks, the energy through apparently simple textures and melodies made him the goa/psy trance star back in the day.
However, after affirming himself as one the genre's leading figures and main representatives, mainly due to three jaw droppingly amzing singles (Teleport, Sugar Rush, Floor Essence) and an impressive debut album, "Moment of truth", Martin Freeland attempted at pleasing an even larger crowd and churned out his prevalently dull sophmore output, "Earth moving the sun". The cardinal flaw here is that he tries too hard to appeal to a large(er) root base of trance listeners, and the music suffers a great deal, as it sounds too scattered, without a well determined sense of direction. Tracks like Vavoom, Parallel Universe and Own The World all start with a promising goa trance touch, but end up getting flooded with cheesy euro trance horns, uplifting hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don't-care build ups and climaxes, with (at that point) absolutely pointless acid synths. There are two totally misplaced brief interludes and a downtempo track which somehow found a way to this album while collecting dust with Martin's Dusty Springfield records. Believe it or not, Seratonin Sunrise and The First Day have MWNN experimenting with singing, thankfully though, voices are lent by other artists. As though things didn't get bad enough already, he throws in a dose of irritating male ranting over production very much resembling the one of, for example, Vavoom.
However, there are a few big pluses on "Earth moving the sun", namely Possessed and The Breech, which have Martin back in the loop, doing what he does best: catchy and playful goa trance which tears dance floors apart. The Breech is somewhat darker though, much more atmospheric than anything else on this album. The trademark catchy melody and acid trickery is all here, just applied to forge a deeper, if you want, more contemplative sound. Possessed is one of his calling cards during a live, while Tarantula, is a really long and patient stomper, with a hard and dominant kick, knocking out everything in its way until the lead comes in and does its thing.
Overall, from where I stand and being aware of my expectations as far as Man With No Name goes, I've always considered this one a dissapointment. I am not saying you will as well, but if you got fairly acquainted with his earlier work, I'd be surprised if you said this came close, let alone surpassed any of that golden stuff.

Absolutely sweet, dynamic, forcefull and harmonic piece of work by MWNN. Maybe it doesn`t exist any trashy MWNN`s track at all, so we can devide his production into excelent tracks and very good ones. From my opinion the proportion of this is 5:3 on Earth Moving The Sun album. Almost each track has got specific awful and uplifting aerated flow.

Notice how some people, the more they try to appear cool, the more they fail miserably? Marilyn Manson, Axl Rose, the guy from Ugly Kid Joe, anyone?! Well, Martin Freelander is facing the same problem here and there on Earth Moving The Sun. At least on Seratonin Sunrise where singer Mickey Banks is doing the best he can to sound like a bad boy struggling with some really ... really (!) lame lyrics. Please leave such tasks to Massive Attack or Underworld, thank you!

What else we got here? Well, the album is out on Perfecto and it shows and not in a good way :( As excited I was about Moment Of Truth, as ungrabbed this leaves me. I mean, a favourite track here has to be something like Treagle, which is nothing but a nice little track, but at least staying somewhat true to the psy/ambient genre. Tracks like the opener Vavoom, Seratonin Sunrise, Own The World, The First Day (Horizon), well, basically, ALL tracks instead land in some psy/club-trance/border techno category I've never been into.

So, a great disappointment? Well, yes, cause Martin seemed to have all the potential on Moment Of Truth, but what we are treated here is fast food easy consumerable, forgettable, twelve on the dozen type of trance. Which is sad cause the last tracks on this album works better than the first half and gives reason to believe he still knew what it was all about. Parallel Universe certainly stays closer to psy even if it may need to be played at the darkest hour not to have me thinking it's cheese ;o) And my favourite here, closing track The Breech, isn't bad either.

But if you like melodic club trance with edge (I'll give Martin that!), you may very well love this album.

The second album from MWNN is by turns more experimental and more commercial than his classic first album 'Moment Of Truth'. The album received mixed reactions from the psy-trance fans who worshipped the early MWNN output, perhaps becuase it contains quite a few departures from the Goa / Psy style.

Given that this is a Perfecto release one should expect quality house/trance,and that expectation is indeed met. Production is as good as would be expected from Oakenfolds flagship label. However the track mix of vocal trance (e.g. 'Seratonin Sunrise') alongside harder psy-trance (e.g. 'Vavoom') means that the album does not flow in the same fashion as its predecessor.

Nevertheless, this is a quality album which should appeal to those with house/trance leanings, although there are a number of harder psy-trance tracks here too. A good, intriguing album which will suffice until (hopefully) MWNN delivers another of the quality of 'Moment Of Truth'.