Hybryds – The Ritual Of The Rave

The opening track is set to a surprisingly (for the HYBRYDS) cumbersome sequential electronic bassline over which percussion patters and a variety of voices float through ddls, loops and reverbs. The first mix of "Sjamanistic Dream" attempts, with an admirable amount of success, to couple drifting Ambient and Ethnic musics with a more mainstream dance electronica. Sounds as if it'd be something like ENIGMA or DEEP FOREST, but is a lot more spartan, smooth and drifty with no obvious hook to sell copious amounts of singles. The other mix, which draws the album to it's conclusion is a lot more inpenetrable an electronic, with rhythm more obvious than beat. In fact it's kinda difficult to tell that they are the same song. Still, as full frontal as it is, it still manages to be and entertaining and charming piece, with it's complex structure churning around incessantly. "Icarus" has a tribal intensity to it, a cycle of percussive events summoning a war party. This opens out into an intense dance piece which borders on industrial with it's crunchy grey slabs of sound. "The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive Part 3" owes more to programming than it does to any kind of ritualistic playing, with a definite electronic approach to the percussion, although the sound itself is as rounded and natural as real time playing. Dark, percussive, at times sounding like a thinner, more busy MUSLIMGAUZE. "Prometheus' Quest For Fire" has an immense, intense size to it, an ever-changing rhythm, thick and muscular, with a screeching, screaming punctuation rising through the drumming.
There's even a 'hidden' seventh track tucked away at the end of #6. A mildly cyclic churning mood piece which sounds like a more in-yer-face take on MICK HARRIS's LULL with distant trumpets and voice snatches, this is by far the darkest piece on this album.

From cool, sleek ambient dance music with ethnic percussion to huge rhythmic mountains, this album lets you sample much this group have to offer. Sometimes this music is wallpaper than full-attention music; at others it's a huge, awe-inspiring mound of sound. It's what you'd expect from HYBRYDS', who have worked for years to earn their considerable reputation.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.