Space Tribe - Collaborations

Space Tribe�c. Up until recently it seemed like Olli Wisdom was about the only keeper of the old school flame. Not to say that his sound never progressed, as he did indeed take the better elements of the full on sound, but he always maintained that wonderful dirty squelchy old school vibe that we know and love from Space Tribe. This new release, the first from Space Tribe Music and released in Japan through Solstice, features a nice collection of Olli Wisdom�fs more recent collaborations with other artists. There is a lot of work with the current full on crowd, so I suspect this release will be a lot more �gcurrent�h than some of Space Tribe�fs work. So without further ado, lets jump in and see just what we have here.

3rd Eye (Spacebase Mix) sees Olli team up with GMS. While I have been a bit harsh on GMS in the past, but I have since made my peace with them, realizing their clones were giving them more of a bad name than they themselves were and thus I am able to objectively look at this track and say I like it. It�fs got the typical GMS bass line, but it�fs held a bit back in the background, which enables the synths to do their thing. We have a nice contrast between some cleaner exotic sounding synths and a nice mixture of Olli�fs dirty melodic leads and GMS�f dirty grinding leads. All in all the Olli squelch factor helps kick the GMS sound up several notches into a nice thumper of a track here. Full on, yes, but good full on.

Next up Olli teams up with a more recent full on master, CPU, to bring us Single Dose. In this case,, CPU does seem to overpower the Space Tribe sound a bit, but they do compliment each other well, even if CPU does seem to have had stronger influence on this track, especially in the bass and percussion areas.
Continuing on, we have a match up with Electric Universe for The Acid Test, which is truly the highlight of the album.. This track is a couple years old now and a meeting of two great old school masters, but this track outshines the newer, supposedly better (in some people�fs minds) tracks by far. Massive leads, super powerful stomping, squelching galore�c It might be old, but it will wipe the floor up with 99% of the new, supposedly �gkilla�h tracks out there. Great stuff here.

Twitch!!!!, made with Psywalker is next on the hit list, and again we have another thumping track here. Kind of full on, but more old school to my ears. Again, we have the squelchy grrr-ing leads, balanced with more recent full on sounding dirty atonal zippy noises. As is common in a lot of Space Tribe tracks, there is a lot of sampling going on here. Some people find some of his sample work to be a bit over the top, but so far there has been nothing too extreme on this release. This track becomes perhaps a hair too �gtypical full on�h for me, but its still fairly good

Next, Olli meets Safi Connection for Dinner With God. We get tricked into thinking there is a big intro coming, only to be suddenly thrown right into the track. If there is one lead sound I have a hopeless weakness for, it is squelchy leads with a strong �gvocal�h quality to them. This track has the psycho robot desperately trying to communicate with us sound that I love, so I�fm totally into this track. The change ups are pretty nice too. Again, pretty full on, but not surprising considering the collaborators, and its good full on so...

Wacko teams us back up with CPU. A typical Space Tribe sample opens things up for us. We have some CPU whirr-ing noises and then the bass kicks in. For a change it�fs not the usual full on fair here and I dare say a bit groovy. We get a nice change up with some congas and the bass changing around a bit to be busier, but not loose the groove. We get a nice total silence break and then some more CPU percussion, filter work before sliding back into the stomp. This is quality stuff here and probably my second favorite track after The Acid Test.

The second team up with GMS has a hard act to follow here with Alternate Future. The intro is cool and moody, but it unfortunately building into a bass line than just seems too bright for the mood the intro set. This track doesn�ft really stand out too much for me. The break goes back to the intro mood and gives us some good stuff for the last two minutes, but its nothing groundbreaking really.

Tall Poppy Syndrome teams us up with Psywalker again. Start out dark and distorted and drop into some thumping buzzy full on with out much fuss. This is another winner that makes up for the previous filler track. Very full on again, but it�fs just dirtier and better than the usual bright. squeaky clean, polished but all to often boring full on we get these days. Sometimes dirty is good, and this is a great example of that. Good beats, good sounds, good development�c. I know a track�fs good if I end up sitting here bouncing to it and not writing anything and this is the third track on this CD to do that for me. Great stuff.

Last up Space Tribe meets the ever morphing psy-legends X-Dream for Turn On/Turn Off. This one drops out of the 140 bpm range to the 110 area. Even more interesting, it�fs a breaks track!!!! Here we have a lot of the Irritant era X-Dream industrial distorted sounds going on with breaks action. As a fan of the long dead psy-breaks movement, I dig this a lot. That said, it�fs so far away from what Olli usually does, it�fs really difficult to imagine what he did on this track. A good track is only because it�fs so different.

The end result - Given the collaborators Space Tribe worked with here, the heavy full on vibe of the CD is no surprise at all. Having said that, there are 3 or 4 excellent tracks here, together with a bunch of other solid effort tracks. Only one track really struck me as a throw away track, which is a lot better than many CDs I have purchased recently.. All and all a nice mixture of the new and the old, with a total WTF moment at the end.