Motech: Cat. # UGCDMT 004
Released March 2010
Track List:
1. Flamuri I Popullit (4:45)
2. Meridian (5:45)
3. Heritage featuring Esteban Adame (5:55)
4. Coat Of Arms (4:55)
5. Darjeeling Sun (5:03)
6. Yrwehear (5:54)
7. Emotional Sequence (5:34)
8. Meloudic Landscapes (6:10)
9. Seven Tribes Of Hoti (4:23)
10. Penny For Your Thoughts (4:11)
11. Midnight Express featuring Esteban Adame (5:02)
12. Her Smile (5:02)
13. Memory Almost Full (5:26)
14. Day Dreaming (2:43)
IN BRIEF: Makes me get my strut on.
House music. Just good ol’ fashioned house music. A smooth groove, a catchy hook, and turning a stiff nose away from gimmicks of the day. No drunk-dumb stomp, white noise wash, fart-squirt bass, skank-ass screech, navel-lint glitch, or anything else like that. Just good ol’ fashioned house music.
Alright, so perhaps that’s embellishing things a bit. Truthfully Frank Juncaj is lumped into the tech-house branch of things, but he’s something of a traditionalist in this field. His sound has that timeless quality to it the best tech-house does, of always being on the fringe of futuristic funk without getting bogged down in the scenery. It’s the backing soundtrack to many a late-night drive through neo-Tokyo in search of a 24-hour noodle shop after a hearty round of the clubs. He shares a sonic palette with the likes of Timewriter, Tripwire, and other similarly named tech-house producers starting with “T” (are there any others?).
And he’s good at what he does, even if he doesn’t get the same kind of recognition other Detroit natives do. Going by the name DJ 3000, he’s released numerous records on his own Motech label (a sub-label of Submerge, which is mostly famous for a couple Drexciya albums), and made a tidy career out of producing classy, (proper) electro-tinged tech-house over the past decade. Now with his third full-length album, the cool-groove vibes carry on as usual, with nary a misstep along the way.
Of course, an album of good tech-house can be dull if it’s only tech-house, thus Juncaj has spiced his album up with a few, er, spices of the Middle East. It’s about the closest to a currently-trendy jump he’s made, taking ‘ethno’ influences for a few tracks, most notably opener Flamuri I Popullit and follow-up Meridian; the former gives us an instantly catchy hook, while the latter mostly features chants complementing hypnotic rhythms. For an album titled Galactic Caravan, they make sense thematically, and it’s odd that Juncaj pretty much drops it for the rest of the album (track titles notwithstanding).
By the time we do get another track of this sort - yet another catchy hook courtesy of Midnight Express - I’ve practically forgotten there was an attempt at a theme in the first place.
Such is the strength of the rest of the tech-house tunes though. Wisely, Juncaj also spaces his album out with a few diversions of the Detroit sound along the way: a bit of techno-stomp in Darjeeling Sun; the obligatory, classy mid-album downtempo cut with Yrwehear, a touch of deep groove with Her Smile, swagger funk in Penny For Your Thoughts, and even what appears to be a live recording for closer Day Dreaming.
Yep, Galactic Caravan is an all-round solid album.
So why just a ‘mere’ 7/10 then? Oh, you know: nothing really fresh here, it’s still mostly just tech-house, etc. Obviously, fans of this genre are going to love the album, and even casual connoisseurs will enjoy it (*cough*). Yet dance music’s discography is filled with options for this genre, and though Juncaj brings undeniable quality, so do several others. Galactic Caravan is a fine pick-up if you are in need of a little more groove in your life, just not an immediately necessary one.
Score: 7/10
ACE TRACKS:
Heritage
Emotional Sequence
Midnight Express
Written by Sykonee, 2010, for Electronic Music Critic. © All rights reserved.
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