Various - Excerpts From The Chillspace

This cd basically ended up being Matsuri Productions last release and as a final release it is somewhat fitting. Although some of Matsuri's later releases were a bit too experimental (or just all over the place) for some people, Excerpts From The Chillspace manages to focus all the experimental energy into a wonderful cd of downtempo goodness. Like most good downtempo piece (and like Matsuri Productions itself) the styles here cover a lot of ground, while still maintaining a high level of quality.

Liquid Dub Connection opens the albums off wonderfully with wide open spaces and huge glassy reverbs and delays on top of slow, echo drenched drums. Quirk is next and does what Quirk has always done best, be quirky. There is a vague regga undertone, but it is definately done in the Quirk style. For me Quirk can run the range from completely brilliant to completely too weird. Luckly this track is on the good side of Quirk and fits in here nicely.

Ju Ju Space Jazz is next and starts us off with some sinister digital frogs before jumping into some downtempo action with a little bit of bass attitude. If anything, thins track screams analog to me. Lots of analog sounding synth wahs, grrrs, bleeps and sweeps. Nice journey. The great Seb Taylor pays us a visit as Digitalis here. At first I was worried this track was gonna break out into full speed, full power Digitalis action, but the tempo is kept under control and, as with a lot of Matsuri's later releases, there is a lot of layed back breaks action going on here.

Pulse 11 by Anti-Matter is next and starts off a little more ambient than a few of the previous tunes. It drifts into more slow somewhat breaky, open and delay soaked drum work. It is a bit similar in vibe to the opening track, but it gets worked up a bit more than Liquid Dub Connections track energy-wise with a fair amount of dense acidy lines towards the end. Pendron is next. Sun God is a fairly straight foward acidy tracks with some breaky touches, Nice stuff.

The intro to Endora's Fusionium is again ambient-ish before drifting into downtempo breaks land. This track is actually fairly active, but never is in danger of leaving "downtempo" land. Lots of changes in layers of percussion here. Good stuff. Eat Static, the gods of being able to do just about anything style-wise, come next with Space Walk. This track is fairly straight up without the breaks elements of most of the previous tracks, but has a strong Indian/ethnic element like much of Matsuri's earlier releases. As is usual with Eat Static it is a great piece of music.

Last but not least is Sandman's Mushroom Symphony. This track probably needs little introduction and is considered by many to possibly be Sandman's finest work. While the track definately gets pounding, the bpm's still stay fairly low and the track makes for a great closer not only for this cd, but as the last track of the last Matsuri CD ever. Its 10 minutes are pure quality, it is different from the norm and it covers a lot of ground other people would probably be leary of touching. In hindsite it makes for the perfect closer from both this CD and for Matsuri's catalog.

The end result - An experimental but quality release from an experiemental but quality label. Aimed more at the home listener but definately useful for the downtempo DJ as well 7.5/10