Ferry Corsten / System F - Trance Nation 2001 (A 'Token Prog' Review)

Ministry Of Sound: 2001

[Sykonee Says: Shame the excellent Trance Nation America from Taylor and Jimmy Van M falls just outside the parameters of this series. Now there's a pair of CDs that deserves some recognition! Come to think of it, why haven't I plucked myself a proper copy of that by now? Time to get on it, methinks. Also, you can read Jack's thoughts on it direct on the Discogs page, if you're curious. Anyhow, onto the 'Token Prog']

Plot twist – it’s CD2! Yes, you didn’t expect the Trance Nation series to give up its first disc to any kind of halfway credible music, did ye? As a side-note, it’s kinda fascinating to go back to these CDs and contrast how the big trance jocks chose to market themselves. Oakenfold and Tiesto hammered the mix CD market hard, treating compilations the way bands treated albums. Meanwhile PVD avoided the format almost altogether, but released more actual albums than Plantpot and Ape Man combined, whereas Ferry was mostly happy to hitch a ride aboard one of the Ministry Of Sound’s most shamelessly commercial trance compilation series.

Accordingly, the Trance Nation outings were never really regarded as any kind of Serious Artistic Statement by Corsten – hell, I don’t think he ever primarily saw himself as a DJ anyway - so when he did come anywhere near a Token Prog Disc, it was more about The Ministry goading him with cattle prods into playing what was seen as commercially viable at the time.

(Also, y’know how I’ve been hyping up the graphic design of CDs from this period? Yeah… we need to talk about that. Trance Nation 2001 has one of the worst covers ever, pitched midway between health and safety signage, E-number-heavy fruit chew wrapper, and the carapace of some aggressively venomous insect. Even nostalgia can’t save this one.)

Because this is Trance Nation, the Token Prog Disc has to open with the most commercially successful prog tune ever, Touch Me, and because this is Trance Nation, it has to be pitched at +4%. The next track is the disc’s solitary concession to “tribal tech” seriousness, and then things get, well… really fun actually. As early as track three, Ferry’s dropping in some nasty warehouse-friendly acid lines courtesy of Lee Coombs, and shortly after he accelerates a pair of Bedrock productions and slams them together with the expert disdain of a Hollywood stunt driver.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s the odd bit of shite on here. Ferry’s own remix of Tony Walker is a load of cobblers, and I don’t care if Human Movement happens to be prog legend Marc Mitchell in disguise: Love Comes Again is still a horrendous slab of rotten cheddar and always has been. But of all the Token Prog Discs we’ve covered, this is by far the most boisterous and exciting, with cuts like the Trisco remix of Freet and Ferry’s own Needlejuice being the kind of jaw wobbling, face stroking, can-I-have-a-sip-of-your-water-mate bangers that rarely make it onto more high-minded Serious Artistic Statement prog mixes. The mixing also sounds just rough enough to be an actual turntable mix, which kinda adds to the whole “I just want to get out of here and cash my cheque” energy Ferry’s bringing. Two thumbs up.

Cursory First Disc Verdict: Completely terrible, but you already knew that. Cosmic Gate’s Firewire sitting side by side with novelty hard dance shit-hit How U Like Bass is one of humanity’s low points.

Paul van Dyk - The Politics Of Dancing (A 'Token Prog' Review)

Ministry Of Sound: 2001

[Sykonee Says: Wait a minute, I've already done a review of this one. Twice! Do we really need another? Well, considering the latter is a 'jokey' two-paragraphs long, and the former is a 4,000 word monstrosity that's so dry that it may as well be a 'Review Written In The Style Of Prog', maybe this deserves another kick at the can. Have at 'er, J'!]


Paul Van Dyk was rather anomalous amongst the big trance jocks in that he didn’t really do mix CDs. Indeed, The Politics Of Dancing was much-touted at the time as the first one he’d ever done, which means we’re supposedly to pretend his MFS showcase for X-Mix never happened. PVD upheld his part of that consensual hallucination by trying really hard to make TPOD stand out, out Sasha-ing Sasha by doing the whole “radically re-edit and remix everything” trick a few years before Involver. The inlay also contains a full page of cryptic gibberish where PVD artfully avoids explaining what “the politics of dancing” actually means. All very high concept.

While we’re at it, here’s another compilation sleeve that’s got all of that 2001 graphic design good stuff going on. Just pause for a moment and stare at a photo of that back cover with tracklist. It’s so beautifully clean it could be from the 1920s Bauhaus. Gotta appreciate Paul looking pensively monochrome in front of some limestone steps on the front too, like a politician holding a press conference to publicly apologise for sleeping with his secretary.

But nevermind that. We’re here to judge how well he jumped the bandwagon. This is an odd one, because everything is so extensively reworked (mainly by giving every tune the same kick/clap/bass combo PVD used on everything around this time) it sounds more like a PVD showcase than an overt Token Prog Disc. It starts out pretty good, with Ashtrax – Digital Reason being exactly the kind of atmospheric proggy trancer that these guys should have played more of. Even early on, the flow feels ultra-fiddly though, the studio’d-to-death nature of the mix stopping it from feeling like a real DJ set. Amazingly, this is the only place in the Token Prog Discs series we’ll hear IIO’s omnipresent Rapture, and I quite like the way PVD rebuilds it into a harder prog-acid stormer. Then there are more vocals. Lots more vocals.

Yeah, I dunno. This just doesn’t flow very well. A lot of stop-starting, a lot of breaks switching to 4/4 and back, and that damn PVD beat on nearly every single track. In the inlay, Van Dyk states that he doesn’t like doing studio mixes because he doesn’t have a crowd to vibe off, and it really shows here. By the time we get to his own Autumn, things are getting unapologetically trancey and there they’ll stay. I don’t know, I feel cheated. This is barely a bandwagon hop at all. Everything is kinda stripped down and proggy, but he’ll be winning absolutely no prog purist points for how naff a lot of this disc is. Another one of those 2001 hat tips to the zeitgeist that doesn’t really please either the trance tribes or the Bedrock hordes.

Cursory Second Disc Verdict: Paul’s having a lot more fun here, which means you will too. More bangers, less fluff: this is main room superclub trance done – mostly - very well.

DJ Tiësto - Revolution (A 'Token Prog' Review)

Virgin: 2001

Never heard of this one? Me neither, until I happened across it on Discogs. Tiesto already had a cottage industry of mix CDs to his name come 2001, with both his Magik and In Search Of Sunrise series in full flow, but most were only available in the UK on import and they were generally single-discers, which didn’t give much scope for including a Token Prog Disc. So Virgin Records cooked up Revolution to capitalise on his growing popularity in the UK market, including a full disc dedicated to that moody drummy stuff so beloved by the Britishers.

Now before we go on, I’d like to temporarily pause my pithy prog appraisal and point out just how much armour piercing nostalgia these 2001 CD sleeves give me. Look at that chunky sans-serif font type, the tasteful minimalist layout. Oh my God, the title even looks like a watermark. I’ve no doubt it’s because the design template is completely ripped off from Virgin’s Anthems series from the same era, which were some of the very first mix CDs I laid eyes on, but there’s something about the graphic design of this era that takes me right back.

Anyway. There’s something else we need to talk about here. It’s the mastering. Whoever mastered this CD fucked up biiiiig time, which is perhaps why it’s largely forgotten even amongst Tiesto’s fans. The whole thing is recorded in mono, seemingly from the bottom of a tin can, on the end of a bad phone line. On Mars. Which is a shame, because the Token Prog Disc here (titled Darkside) is actually pretty good. Not great, but very listenable.

Plantpot opens with his own remix of Delerium, because of course, and while the ultra-syrupy vocal stylings of Leigh Nash weren’t winning any prog cool points, the fact he cut this remix at 125bpm tells you which way the wind was blowing in clubland. And despite the “Darkside” moniker, CD1 is actually quite smooth early on, less about the pulverising tech trance of Lethal Industry or Flight 643 and more a grown up version of those cartoon magik pixies searching for their sunrises that made Tiesto his name, the likes of Golden Desert and Innocence being dreamy closing-credits trance that don’t make your eyes roll so violently that your sockets get friction burn.

Things start to pick up pace with Fred Numf’s remix of Lovin’, although you can tell it’s 2001 because Tiesto gets it out of the way before the big trancey bit really gets going. The second half is much more percussive and the bandwagon hop is finally in full flow. Things get progressively harder and less tuneful before climaxing with utter inevitability on the tribal drums and ethnic wailing of The Search. Just a shame the mastering takes most of the oomph out of these cuts.

Cursory Second Disc Verdict: Magik Seven on third hand cassette rip. Okay, the tracklist is slightly different, but another good reason why nobody remembers this compilation.

Various - Perfecto Presents... Paul Oakenfold: Ibiza (A 'Token Prog' Review)

Perfecto: 2001

First up to bat is the ape man himself, Lord Oakenfold. Oakey is a slight outlier on this series because he started the bandwagon hop earlier than his peers. Ever the savvy A&R man, he saw the way the wind was blowing a year before most in the trance scene, dabbling with a proggy first disc on both Perfecto Presents… Another World (only released in the US) and its sort-of sister Travelling (everywhere but the US) in 2000. Another World is easily the best of Oakey’s prog efforts, but the Sykonaut has already run the rule over that one, and my benevolent blog overlord demands a separate entry into the EMCritic archive. Gotta harvest those search engine clicks, y’all.

Instead I get to cover Perfecto Presents… Ibiza. It’s now 2001, and boy are we going full prog here. Another World and Travelling both had Token Prog Discs, but they were very much progressive trance. This, on the other hand, is prog at its most 2001. Prog as in “progressive nothing”. The big echoey tribal drums, pulsing basslines and resolute lack of melodic top end are all present and correct. But how well does the ape man ape the prog men?

Honestly, CD1 starts so hilariously over-proggy it’s almost parodic. The first track is eleven and a half minutes long, fer chrissake! It’s like Oakey is deliberately setting out to alienate his trance kiddy fanbase. By the time we reach the fourth tune (and I use the word in the loosest possible sense) things have become so soporific my mind had wandered to why Oakenfold decided to style this disc after Ibiza, given the totalitarian greyness of the music is more evocative of Watford on a damp Wednesday than the White Isle. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any less cheerful, in come Radiohead with Idioteque. Oh my.

Yes, it seems as well as the prog bandwagon jump, this compilation catches Oakenfold at the start of his attempted Serious Artist phase, with Radiohead, Depeche Mode, U2 and The Prodigy trying to mix up the club tunes with Proper Songs. We’re really getting peak pretentious Oakenfold here, on both discs. The middle of CD1 also tips its hat to 2001’s other big fad: “nu skool” breaks, which really doesn’t help lift the energy levels any. Finally some drive is injected by Arena – Transit, before Oakenfold loses interest in that tack and ends the disc with Narayan, which would have had more impact had Fat Of The Land not been rinsed to death by 2001.

We’re off to a good start here. And by good, I mean bad. This is really rubbish, whether you’re a glowstick brandisher or a prog purist. Maximum prog points, minimum enjoyment.

Cursory Second Disc Verdict: Honestly, still pretty proggy. Right up until it’s not. The fact PPK – ResuRection exists in the same region of the observable universe as CD1, never mind the same jewel case, is testament to the remarkable variety of the human condition.

Jack Moss Presents: The Token Prog Discs

No blog post or ACE TRACKS playlist from me this time. Instead, my old writing partner Jack Moss came to me with the offer of an interesting concept that I couldn't refuse. I'll let him summarize from here...


Remember 2001? Nokia 3310s, PlayStation 2s, nary a superhero movie in sight and the last lingering hangover of relative sanity from the 1990s before freedom fries, global recessions and the general vortex of ever-accelerating doom we’ve been spiralling down ever since. Looking back, it feels like a year stuck in a holding pattern from the previous decade, not quite sure where we were going with this new millennium shit yet, and the same was true if you were a clubber. Electroclash was just starting to emerge from New York, Fabric released its very first mix CD and nu skool breaks was some sort of thing, but generally the scene was stuck in the same superclub mode that had dominated the ’98-2000 boom years.

And in the middle of all this, there was prog. A whole lotta prog. For whatever reason, prog reached its all time ascendance in this period. You couldn’t swing a cat in a record store without hitting a B-side prog remix, and the genre even achieved its one, and probably only, chart topping UK single with Rui Da Silva’s Touch Me. And whereas progressive house in its original early ‘90s incarnation had been a varied, playful thing full of sounds and steals from anything the ponytailed producers could shove into their primitive samplers, the second wave of prog was as proggily prog-prog as you could imagine, all moody basslines, heavy downpours of percussion and absolutely as little melody as possible.

But something fun did emerge from this unlikely dominion: the spectacle of DJs from over in glowstick trance land feeling the urge to jump aboard the bandwagon. And so for a year or so, it became obligatory for all the biggest trance DJs to devote disc one of their latest mix compilation to some dutiful prog dabbling before whipping out the supersaws on disc two.

And you know what? Unlike the decade’s later bandwagon hops of farty electro basslines appearing in absolutely everything everywhere, and Brit DJs pretending they liked minimal techno, there were some surprisingly good results from the cheesemonger DJs deliberately reigning in their flamboyant tendencies. It turns out some of these guys could play pretty well when they weren’t shovelling as many two minute breakdowns into a set as the Godskitchen laser array could handle. And with their natural trance tendencies always peeking through, some of them managed to be more entertaining than the actual prog DJs in this period. (Seriously, you try whistling anything on Digweed’s Los Angeles Global Underground).

So now, with 2001 a frankly terrifying twenty two years ago and counting, we’ll be journeying back through time to see which of the Big Five trance boys (Oakenfold, Tiesto, Armin, PVD and Ferry) hopped that bandwagon best! The rules are simple: the prog discs will be ranked according to their prog credentials, and we’ll poke our head briefly into the main room to scope CD2. So without further ado, join me for a deep dive into…

The Token Prog Discs.

Stormloop - Snowbound*

Glacial Movements Records: 2011

Yet another artist I've long meant to return to, and simply neglected for... gosh, half a decade now? There's a silly reason for this, in that when I picked up his Into The Void album, I thought I was diving into an artist with an impeccable work rate, his prior decade seeing the release of some twenty LPs worth of music. Now appearing on ..txt, it looked as though Stormloop was ready to launch his career ever higher. And there would be I, having his Bandcamp page bookmarked, getting all those early alerts that another session of lush ambient tones was about to drop. Only... it didn't.

Not that Kev Spence went totally dark after Into The Void, still releasing the odd item here and there. Just compared to his output prior, it's quite the drop-off. I'm sure there's any number of reasons for this – real world events conflicting, goals mostly accomplished, etc. - but yeah, when an artist slips from your recollection, so too does returning to their discography for another dive.

Fortunately, I was reminded of him when I started my splurge on Glacial Movements Records. Come to think of it, Stormloop was technically my introduction to the label, name-dropping them in my review of Into The Void. Didn't really make a connection then, and wouldn't for another couple years, until covering Skare's Grader. Funny how that works out. Anyhow, Glacial Movements offers bulk CD buys, so when I finally took the plunge, I was quite happy to see Stormloop's Snowbound* still among the options. Physical medium is already plenty rare in Kev's catalogue, and the fact such an old item (over a decade now!) was there for the taking, well, how can you beat that?

Just in case you weren't clear about the sort of album you're in for, the titular opener very gradually eases you into a wintry clime'. It almost feels like you're awakening from some long, restless slumber, unsure of your surroundings, biting cold piercing your flesh as you huddle yourself, gathering your bearings. The synth drone is ominous, yet somehow awe inspiring too, as though you know full well you're in an inhospitable realm that contains its own unique beauty. All the while, a steady electronic pulse carries you along, the sort of minimalist tone that will instantly get your Biosphere triggers flaring.

The desolate dark drone doesn't let up for the rest of the album. Tracks with titles like Cold Winds, A Blizzard, Dense Fog, and Losing Sleep should tell you the sort of album you're in for. We even seem to get space bound by the end, even though the foreboding tone doesn't offer much respite. There are moments of reflective tranquility (Space Station J), but once again, Glacial Movements has drawn some of the most isolationist ambient out of its contributing artists. Now excuse me while I wrap myself in more blankets. It cold here in Vancouver!

Public Energy - Slumber / Velocity

Probe Records: 1994/2021

Not just the name of a Speedy J album, Jochem Paap used the 'Public Energy' alias as a means of releasing additional singles on Probe Records, the Plus 8 spin-off featuring techno of a harder bent. This was just something many producers used to do, wanting their stylistically different tracks separate from their main projects. Come to think of it, it still happens, though mostly in niche ways – in contemporary over-saturated scenes, if you have an alias that catches on, you gotta' ride that as much as you can, no matter how much you think your lo-fi acid ambient-core track clashes with your lolli-trap hyper-hands cut.

Still, there was a fair bit of distance between the more traditional takes on Detroit techno Jochem was doing as Speedy J (just ignore Pull Over ...please?) and the boshier stuff offered as Public Energy. It wasn't a lengthy divergence, mind, releasing just one record before he got sucked into that whole Artificial Intelligence business with Warp Records, steering his career path into 'serious' music making for a good portion of the '90s. Yet while in the midst of his Ginger and G Spot era, Mr. Paap saw fit to release another Public Energy record with Probe Records. The allure for making something for the true underground heads, flailing away at 4am in a sweaty warehouse, was just too much to resist, I guess. But hey, at least he eventually said nuts to all the 'proper' ways of doing techno, going for the jugular on the regular.

And even here, Jochem goes about doing bosh in a slightly smarter way than what his fellow Dutchmen would. Side A Slumber still features those over-driven gabber beats, but teased and held back, echoing and percolating among themselves for a long lead-in, punchy acid soon joining the intense rhythmic action. Then... what's this? Light, sinewy synth pads? Is... is Slumber turning into a trance track? No, not really, but in being coupled with these beats, it does impart a hypnotic feel.

B-side cut Velocity is a bit more traditional for full-throttle techno, and might even be credibly considered hard trance of the era. It's certainly got a bit of an Oliver Lieb vibe going for it, and features all the requisite synth breakdowns and acid climaxes you'd expect of the genre. If you've ever felt forlorn that Speedy J didn't embrace more trance back when, Velocity will certainly be a treat for your ears.

The Bandcamp re-issue throws in a bonus track, P.A., which originally appeared on The Silcon Ghetto EP Vol. 1 from Daniel Bell's short-lived Accelerate label. Yes, even more short-lived than Probe Records. It, too, is also quite boshy, but in a total Detroit minimalist way, making it an effective tool for your DJing needs, but that's about it. You really wouldn't expect any less from sharing vinyl space with DB-X. Kind of clashes with the original single, but eh, isn't the whole point of digital re-issues rescuing wayward tracks on defunct labels?

Children Of The Bong - Sirius Sounds

Planet Dog/Mammoth Records: 1995/1996

In the great Electronic Music Encyclopedia, the chapter on “What Could Have Been...?” is replete with artists, acts, producers, and projects that never saw their fulfilled potential. In a psychedelic scene with many flash-in-the-pan names and one-and-done wonders, Children Of The Bong's story always felt particularly cruel. A promise of something truly unique and remarkable, cut entirely too short due to circumstances utterly out of their control. Misters Henry and Goganian basically created psy dub years before it ever caught on!

I'll grant there were already tunes on the downtempo side of things within the psy scene, but much of it seemed in flux with already existing genres - ambient dub, world beat, acid breaks, goa trance, and so on. It took a true all-star act like Shpongle (re: Simon Posford and Raja Ram) to essentially set the terms and tropes of what psy dub would go on to entail. Yet for all the groundbreaking ideas those two were credited with, Children Of The Bong got there first, and quite possibly were even more intuitive with said ideas involving improvised analogue gear, as evidenced on their lone album, Sirius Sounds.

All those wiggly, squiggly, free-flowing trippy-drippy sounds psy dub is so often associated with are in full effect here. Hell, there's a track titled Squigglasonica, itself something of a spiritual successor to Ionospheric State (which I touched upon in Transmissions From Planet Dog). Funky, hip-shakin' rhythms coupled with delightfully fun knob twiddling on those wormy acid leads, and how could you not think of a title more appropriate?

These tracks are more representative of the sort of live jams Rob and Daniel would do, but they made room for more traditional takes on psychedelic world beat too. Well, about as traditional as anyone out of the Megadog scene would go, and even then throwing in their wildly warped variations of it. Interface Reality may be comparatively chill, but that don't mean the acid doesn't get a good workout along the way. The Veil has the sort of po-faced spiritual samples coupled with tongue-in-cheek low-ridin' basslines that reminds everyone not to take this scene too seriously. Underwater Dub gets about as deep into the reggae dub side of things as you could possibly go with this album, while Life On Planet Earth... actually sounds like a fairly typical spaced-out psy-dub track, until you remember it came out years before that was really a thing.

Okay, so clearly Children Of The Bong were 'ahead of their time', and all that. Why are they not regarded in the same breath as that scene's major players, then? Two reasons, one clearly being they broke up shortly after Sirius Sounds came out, Rob Henry carrying on with different music after. The second is just bad label luck, Planet Dog/Ultimate already showing strains of mismanagement with their signed acts. Fortunately, tales of the Bong continued to linger over the ages, and Sirius Sounds has seen some expanded re-issues recently. No excuses for overlooking this album any longer then.

Lucette Bourdin - Silver Moon

Earth Mantra/Fantasy Enhancing: 2009/2021

Twenty CDs may seem like a thorough amount of albums for a retrospective box-set, but truth be told, this only touches upon one aspect of Lucette's discography. Well, maybe one and a half, if you include all the early, self-released stuff too. But yes, this collection of Ms. Bourdin's music primarily focuses on her output on Dark Duck Records, when she in fact had two labels supporting her, the other being Earth Mantra.

I'm not sure why those albums weren't included with this box-set – some sort of licensing hurdle, perhaps? Or could they just not be *gasp* as good as her other material, thus getting cut to keep this box-set a simple twenty CDs long? Guess I could find out for myself by checking out those Earth Mantra albums (I like the artwork of Golden Sun!) but, eh, I've taken in so much of Lucette's ambient (just... so very much), I will need a little break n' buffer after I've finished off this current collection.

Anyhow, I bring all this up because, according to Lord Discogs, Silver Moon is the lone Earth Mantra release to find its way into Retrospective Box Set (2005 – 2017). Again, I'm not sure why this is so. Fair point that some of those Earth Mantra albums were collaborations with Darrell Burgan, but others like Rumors From Cypress Town or Radiant Stars or Seeking Ganesha or Timeless Shore or Horse Heaven... were these not worthy? Ergh, I'm probably focusing way to much on something that's likely just a coincidence of circumstance. Let's get back to Silver Moon, one of my favourite Kitaro pieces- erm, I mean, the album I'm supposed to be reviewing. (seriously though, Kitaro's Silver Moon is such a lovely outing of haunting New Age ambience)

Almost immediately, I'm struck with a slightly different vibe than I'm used to from Lucette's typical brand of gentle, flowing ambient drone. For sure the synth pads still glide and weave along, but there's more of a mysterious feel to Now The Moon, less prominence on harmonic layers of timbre. Gosh, there's even choir pads, emerging from the winds of an approaching night. If that wasn't enough to send a bit of a chill down the spine, some pieces towards the end, like From The Shadowy Cote, With Silver Claws, Moveless Fish, and In A Silver Stream, edge remarkably close to the domains of dark ambient. Even a piece like Walks In Night, while more grand than most of this album, has an omnipresent ominous atmosphere about it.

For sure there's a few tracks that touch upon Ms. Bourdin's more New Age approach to ambient drone. She Peers And Sees features harmonic strokes while gentle woodblocks plonk in rhythmic fashion, while Silver Trees does that lovely ebb and flow drone some of her best works entailed. Guess I just wasn't quite prepared to hear an album of 'Lucette Goes Goth', but then every ambient artist likes getting in touch with their darkside at some point.

Skua Atlantic - Silfra Diving

Fantasy Enhancing: 2021

I can't say I was hotly anticipating this album from Skua Atlantic because, well, I wasn't expecting it to happen at all. Don't get me wrong, I was tickled pink when I heard a follow-up to Atlantic Fusion was seeing the light of day, but you'll forgive me for thinking such a thing wouldn't happen. Despite the first pairing between Mick Chillage and Futuregrapher being a solid outing of retro-electro ambient techno, I don't recall there being a ton of hype for it, seemingly flying by the night as it appeared on Databloem. It simply didn't make a big deal about being a pairing between two of that scenes more prominent names. A one-off pairing then, the two going back to their solo projects after and booking time for whenever they get to work with Lee Norris again.

Two years later though (and during the height of global lock-downs, presumably), the two reconvened for another session of Skua Atlantic sounds, Silfra Diving coming out two years ago now (save a couple months). And now I'm reviewing it two years later, almost two years after (save a couple days!) I reviewed their first album. Which means Mick and Árni are possibly working and set to release a third Skua Atlantic album sometime soon, which I'll be reviewing in two years from now. Okay, probably not, but man, wouldn't that be hilarious if so?

Anyhow, the immediate thing I noticed about Silfra Diving is just how much more brittle it sounds, leaning even further into the electro aesthetic compared to the duo's debut. Granted, Atlantic Fusion had something of a soft Balearic vibe going for it, what with ample samples of crashing waves and flying seagulls, but greater emphasis on synth pads and melodies dominated that album too. Also, it was mastered by Aes Dana, which means given the always unbeatable Ultimae Mixdown™. Far as I can tell, Silfra Diving's mastering was handled by Árni, which is fine for the chill electro on hand, but simply can't compete with Vincent's lush, widescreen sonics.

That also means some of the more atonal leads this brand of electro likes is more prominent, which you can hear right from the jump in opener Reykjavik Dublin First Transmission. For sure there are still nice backing pads complimenting these tracks, but it's clear the machines have taken over for this outing of Skua Atlantic, some portions getting downright Berlin-School experimental in their execution.

I guess it's no surprise I prefer this album when it gets into some brisk, crisp electro rhythms with icy-cool synths and retro-future atmosphere. Where Cities Once Stood, Virtual Temples, and Kaffi Vinyl all hit upon such vibes, but just as much time is spent on pieces on the downbeat, often subtle, moody excursions more interested in abstract bleeps and bloops. They're fine for what they are, it's just when stacked against what was heard on Atlantic Fusion, I can't help but come away left a tad wanting. Silly unexpected expectations.