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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (13 ratings)

Klarky Cat - Gumbo - 12-Jan-08 02:25 AM
This is truly one of my favourite deep house records of all time. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new, some little detail I never noticed before. Beautiful production, so crisp and clear, but warm and full at the same time, blending techy precision with deep house emotion. 'Gumbo' has little melodies in the percussion, beneath all its delicate interwoven intricacies, and the overall mood of this track is so sweet: if you're having a bad day, put this track on and the world will seem like a much brighter place. A smile is almost guaranteed. 'Custard Gannet' has a slightly darker vibe initially, but it develops soon enough and fully earns its title. Works well on the floor, too. The Blooty Mix is a useful bridging tool and has slightly progressive edge. The Toko boys must have been truly inspired when they penned these tracks. A very very special record, and for me, spiritual deep house at its finest.

DJD - Dance (Looks Like Love) - 08-Jan-08 06:51 AM
The A-side of this release uses samples from Chic's 'Dance, Dance, Dance'; essentially it's a rework, and pretty well done, considering it's so hard to top that particular classic. Flipside is a vocal dub track that sounds like the real Jamaican deal, not sure whether this is another rework or an original track. The disc centre gives no clues to either, but my copy is in a paper sleeve, so perhaps there were acknowledgements on the finished sleeve? (If there ever was one).

Slam Mode - Novus Ordo EP - 07-Jan-08 03:06 AM
Verging on selling this, I checked it for condition and rediscovered the wigged out cinematic weirdjazz house of 'Umbra' with its gritty squelchy hi-hats, Rhodesy stabs, and sliding pads, over a tense bassline that pops in and out of the mix. The track is kind of sinister but in an extremely pleasant way! The hi-hat is actually the main rhythm component, and at times it seems as if the rhythm is hanging on by its fingernails, really quite edgy, just held together as that hi-hat taps out a strangely accented latin rhythm; indeed the subtle latin undertones of the track come more and more to the fore as the tinkly piano arrives later on. Fully wiggin'!
Sadly the other two tracks are not in the same league for me; 'Futuro' has some great ideas but sounds a little dated now (like really early Plank material), whilst 'Outre-Mer' is a major key affair that seems best suited for use in an elevator. 'Umbra' is definitely THE track if you want something well off the beaten path. Hard to gauge what it would do to a dancefloor: scare 'em off or freak 'em out. Probably best reserved for those wiggier moments in the back room...

Judas Priest - Defenders Of The Faith - 09-Dec-06 02:48 AM
Although the sleevework on this album was obviously intended to continue from 'Screaming For Vengeance' and maybe 'Hero Hero' in its style and imagery, it is sadly... the worst, and spoils an otherwise excellent album. Again we have the guitar-wielding, melody-rich and highly-hummable numbers like 'Rock Hard Ride Free', 'The Sentinel', and 'Some Heads Are Gonna Roll', with fine performances all round and Rob Halford delivering some of his best vocals to date. Ballad-esque moment comes courtesy of 'Night Comes Down', and Mr. Halford gives it his all to deliver an emotional and effective vocal that really communicates the pain and sadness of the track, tinged with its glimmer of faint hope. Anthemic moments come with 'Heavy Duty'/'Defenders Of The Faith' and 'Love Bites' (nice use of delays and layers on the vocals on this track), pretty simple and a bit drum-machine-driven, but all the better for it, somehow. And there's the heads-down, super-fast sequel to the 'Exciter' of 'Stained Class', 'Freewheel Burning', which in itself has its own sequel in 'Eat Me Alive' (no prizes for guessing the sub-text there, then ;-). Guitars and vocals are very much to the forefront of the arrangements and the mixes of these tracks, which was pretty much the style that was established with 'Killing Machine' and was evidently a formula that worked for this band that never let its distinctive style and sound collapse into formula. This LP is pretty much on a par with 'Screaming For Vengeance', and these two albums are very much a pair in terms of their style, sound, production and general feel overall. A highly productive time for the band, no doubt, representing a stage of maturity, experience and intelligence in their songwriting, and although there's plenty of guitar acrobatics, scorching solos, and arrangement development, the band never lose sight of the importance of just laying down good solid rockin' songs with an epic angle. Which was what they were really good at. And this was the last Priest album, with metal in its heyday, of what could be termed their 'mid'-period before 'Turbo' in 1986, although the sleeve art on that LP is obviously intended to indicate a continuity across the three albums.

Judas Priest - Killing Machine - 06-Jan-06 01:52 AM
Classic, classic Judas Priest. Tip-top production for an album of that time, very strong songs end-to-end, well-chosen track order (with the ballad-esque 'Before The Dawn' to boot), explicit yet not too serious lyrics. They seemed to manage a few anthems in their time, and 'Take On The World' was pushing for a cohesive and unified NWOBHM to break just as they had honed their sound to this point where they were really breaking onto exciting new ground. By this time there was no turning back from the leather/whips/bikes/handcuffs/studs imagery, either. Rob Halford had developed his quite unique vocal style and really established it here (he developed it some more on 'Screaming For Vengeance'). This was a different album from 'Sin After Sin', yet still progressed from it, was somehow far more tuneful than 'Stained Class', and more sophisticated and enduring than 'British Steel' ('Breaking The Law', 'United', and 'Living After Midnight' notwithstanding as far as endurance goes). Always exploring new avenues (one of the first metal bands to use synth guitars), they were one of the first bands to establish a new blueprint for riff-driven, well-arranged, fists in the air, ass-kickin' rock and metal with this release - possibly their finest...?