Ticon – Zero Six After

Welcome to progressive giants Ticon! These guys have been members of a very exclusive club of front runners on the proggy scene at least since their last and awesome album Aero from 2003. Aero is one of my all time favourite progressive albums and my expectations for their follow up were huge. I certainly expected something extraordinary, and hearing that the swedish lads had decided to spend something like two years in the studio making ZSA it sounded as if they too wanted to live up to the hype. But would it be overproduced now ...? Would the expectations be too big a mouthful?

In one word, NO! Goddamnit, Zero Six After is a nice album. Even better than Aero and sheer excellence nearly all the way. There certainly are no drop outs on this album and a couple of tracks that sends me directly into orbit. U Make Me Wanna Drink More and The Analogue H come to mind. These are mind blowing. Also the sample in Rit It Up is among the best samples I've ever heard in trance music. Amazing work guys!

Fact is, the album is so brillant it's easier to nitpick a few things I am less happy with. The pettiness of these details should illustrate the quality of this album. Now this really is nitpicking, but personally I would have liked to see the album start of with a monster track. Instead it starts with the expectable mood setter. Prologue is nice, yeah yeah, 1:48 mins of nice build up sounds, but these guys really are about kick ass dancing and mind expanding music and I would have liked to see them set off as that directly from track 1. Still, Prologue isn't bad. It's just ... Well, I said I was nitpicking, right!

Kids Of The 80's is a great track but the first couple of times I heard it, I couldn't help thinking I had heard the lead riff before. Well, check out Les Rythmes Digitales "From: Disco To: Disco" and tell me if there isn't a resemblance. It's still a great track. Just sounds very inspired.

Track 8 "Chicking Shaker" contains a sample going "Why you wanna borrow my chicken shaker" with the ch in chicking pronounced as sh. Maybe the joke is too advanced for me, but I have no idea what chicken shaker means and don't get this sample at all. Is it a joke? Just a funny sample Ticon is using? Bad idea! I don't mind funny samples, but the fun needs to go somewhere. Otherwise, it's just stupid. A real shame because besides the sample it's a great track. But I can't hear past the sample.

So, those are ALL the details I have a hard time with on this album. Other than that, this album is brilliance from start to finish. The sound is overwhelming and with so many details in all the tracks you hear instantly that it's hours and hours in front of the computer. I love it! Well, except for track 8 I have to down from a 4 star to a 2 star because of the idiotic sample. Though I am ready to stand corrected if it actually means something intelligent!

In the end, however, that downing from 4 to 2 stars puts this album in as no. 2 on my "best progressive release of 2005" list just one inch behind my 2005 winner. Yeah, the best is yet to come ...