ukiro, Nov 06, 2003
Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of Necton at all, so you probably should pay too much attention to what I think of them ;-)
Judging from the sound of this, the tracks on ACDC004 (Nectons first release on this label) were some old garbage they wanted to get out of the way before getting to the recent stuff. This sounds a lot more up to date, but that doesn't mean it's good.
"Stahlwerk" has a kind of kickdrum that I find it hard to enjoy. It worked well in old goa tracks (like some early Koyote releases, tracks by Kaaya and so on) but here it stands out too much. Anyway, the bass is a galopping (how's that spelled anyway?) deal that is extremely stiff, as with a lof of their tracks. No groove what so ever. Lets face it, compared to good house music psy is about as funky as Arnold Schwarzenegger, but this makes Arnold seem like he's James Brown. It's not so unfunky it gets funky either, like electro - its too stale even for that. They later add an off-beat bass as well, which just sounds strange as it occupies pretty much the same frequencies as the bass they already had going. Some robotic quasi-melodies join in along with the generic dancemusic percussion (off-beat open hihat, snare on the second and fourth kickdrum of each bar and so on) and the track drops sound after sound until it ends. Nothing I would dance to.
"Bob On Acid": An off-beat bass here and a slightly less annoying kick drum, but it's so stale and robotic it hurts. No atmosphere to be heard either, so there is very little to grab on to. They try hard to get groovy with some tribal-ish drumming, but fail. It's not bad in the mp3.com sense (you know, 16 year olds with a pirated copy of Reason trying to make "techno" without the slightest idea of what that word means), but more like totally anonymous music with great production. It sounds like it _should_ be good, but it's not. It's got most of the "right" sounds, crisp production and it's on a cool label and all, but it's just boring.
3.8/5 (