Various - MO_AMBIENT

Móatún 7: 2023

It's honestly quite remarkable how much music Móatún 7 released in just half a decade of existence. Seemed like so long as Mason Verger could find another quaint picture of Icelandic scenery, Árni would find another artist willing to contribute to his label. Whether much of it was worth your while likely boils down to personal preference, but given the calibre of musician that wandered through (mostly those somehow connected to the Lee Norris Multiverse), I'd wager your betting odds are rather high should you dabble some.

I cannot deny the label's extensive catalogue is daunting to dive into, and though I've dipped a bit here and there, felt it was about time to explore it more proper-like (shame it took Futuregrapher's passing to finally get me to do so). And what better way than via a compilation or two? Well, maybe if I got one that's more representative of the electro, techno, and acid works Móatún 7 typically peddled, but me being me, I had to spring for an ambient collection instead.

Actually, I'm a little surprised MO_AMBIENT, Móatún 7's first foray into such a compilation, came so late into the label's existence. True, this wasn't a focused genre for the print (pretty useless making vinyl of ambient most times), with plenty other outlets catering to those interests from the same artists. Still, so many naturalistic scenery shots, so much in common with labels like Archives and whatnot. Assumptions and all, y'know?

Some names I recognize off here include Futuregrapher, D York, Fallen, and World Circuit (Árni and Lee collab'). That's only four out of fourteen, so great stuff if I'm looking for more new names to discover! Some seem to be artists that had made their home on Móatún or closely affiliated prints like Intellitronic Bubble and Neo Oujia (Self Oscillate, Lovetrip, Mint Deluxe, DJ Dorrit). More are general wanderers over the past decade: Pageant (3) appeared on Omni Music; Peachy (15) appeared on... Oh, hey, he was also UOVI. I remember that album!

Musically, MO_AMBIENT sticks to the dronescape side of things. Some go darker (UNUIT's At The Edge Of Known Space, Self Oscillate's Intercontinental), some go dubbier (Peachy's The Dead Of Winter, Pageant's Just Go To Sleep, Augen's The Mantle Is Asleep), some go tranquil (Juan Moreno's Song For Catedral, Mint Deluxe's Amibohambi), while others get experimental (Badstøf's The Painter, Futuregrapher's Voices In My Head). Lovetrip even gets cheeky with the 'ambient' concept in Home Bakes, a soft electro rhythm firmly placing this outside the realms of proper ambient. Pretty sure it's more typical of the Móatún 7 sound though.

Ribbing aside, MO_AMBIENT is a decently varied compilation, most tracks hovering in the four-to-six minute mark with only two breaching double-digits in length (D York's MFV3 and Amibohambi). If you need a sampler of Móatún 7 to start... Well, maybe try one of their acid collections instead. This one's better served as a companion piece to the label's oeuvre.

Derek Carr - Misty Mountain EP

Omni Music: 2016

Another chap I lost tabs on once FireScope shuttered. Not that Derek's been terribly busy on the production front since, releasing a couple records per year, mostly on his own Trident Recordings print. Actually, funny that, in he set it up way back at the turn of the millennium to self-release his debut EP, Copper Beach. I guess that one record was enough a 'proof of concept' to get the attention of other prints (Digital Soul, Geek Records, Nice & Nasty, etc.), thus Trident sat fallow for nearly two decades after. For whatever reason (tired of getting dicked by other prints?), he dusted his Trident off with a soft relaunch of the aptly titled Reset EP in 2019. It's mostly remained his home since, save the occasional contribution to Pariter.

All of which has precious little to do with the EP I'm currently talking up, Misty Mountain. Indeed, the only reason I got this is from browsing Omni Music's wares, then doing a double-take upon seeing Derek Carr's name pop up. Like, obviously I was subconsciously aware he'd released something like this at some point – I had to have noticed it when checking out his Discogs page during his FireScope run. Still, seeing a dude who'd I'd primarily known for tasty Detroit techno, appearing on a label I was discovering as a purveyor of Detroit-leaning d'n'b, with a piece of cover art that suggested something more out of the ambient or folk camps than either... Well, of course I had to snatch that up post-haste.

And upon listening to opening track El Capitano (a... Star Trek reference?), yeah, I can hear why this ended up on Omni Music. Not strictly a jungle track, more a chill spacey breaks session, its broken beat nature still fits with the label's general manifesto. His initial two records for Omni, First and Second Detour, were closer to proper d'n'b (jazzier and atmospheric, respectively), so its interesting Derek steered even further from that on Misty Mountain. And perhaps that's why this ended up being the last of them for Omni, realizing whatever impulse he felt exploring 2-step rhythms had been sated just three EPs deep.

Anyhow, second track Q (yep, definitely a Star Trek reference) gets even more melodic than El Capitano, pretty much maintaining the optimistic retro-future vibe as heard in much of Mr. Carr's work. Just, y'know, with a chill, shuffly 2-step rhythm along for the ride. Not to mention an additional spritely piano hook that'll get all your '90s PLUR-goo feels flowing. The titular third track (no longer a Star Trek reference) brings us back to d'n'b land, sounding not a touch out of a typical LTJ Bukem set of any era, frankly. Cannot deny though, the little melody Derek throws on top of The Misty Mountain reminds me of... some Jam & Spoon song, maybe? Dammit, hold a minute...

~re-listens to Tripomatic Fairytales 2001~

Huh, could have sworn it sounded similar to Path Of Harmony. Stupid Mandela Effect...

Rockers Hi-Fi - Mish Mash

Warner Bros. Music: 1996

Seems ridiculous it's taken me this long to pick up something from Rockers Hi-Fi. As the kick-off artists of the seminal Ambient Dub series from Beyond Records, you'd think they were a shoo-in for top spots on my Want Lists. And indeed, their albums are reasonably cheap on most second-hand markets these days, so hardly difficult in procuring something from their lengthy history. Ah, that may be the kicker though, the bulk of their music coming out under this handle, whereas I was introduced to them by their original name of Original Rockers. That disconnect has always kept them out of my mind as O.G. Ambient Dub artists, even though that's complete and utter bunk.

And it's not like I couldn't have grabbed their first album as Original Rockers - Rockers To Rockers. After all, it got reissued under their upgraded handle of Rockers Hi-Fi a mere two years later once they jumped labels. Yeah, but I wanted the Original Rockers, because, um, purity of memory, or somesuch (original tracks with original uncleared samples too, heh).

Whatever, I'm here talking up their sophomore album, Mish Mash, because I spied it among a Discogs seller's wares while browsing other material. Just because it isn't Original Rockers doesn't mean I can't enjoy some downtempo dub jams. This even has Going Under on it, Glyn and Richard's stab at trip-hop, and their earliest collaboration with future running MC Farda P. And it got a big ol' remix package done by Kruder & Dorfmeister, the far more famous duo who cannot be denied having drawn influence from the Rockers' brand of dubby downtempo vibes. Granted, many future downtempo dub doods would be influenced by them – it pays to be among the first setting the template.

Mish Mash though... Well, it is a bit of a mish-mash of an album. Absolutely you have the reggae inspired tunes, including an eleven-minute opener in The 8th Shade. They also try getting fancy in their sampling, a gentle harp melody quietly playing in Uneasy Skanking before erupting with one of those distorted bass leads. There's even some dabblings of acid jazz with Now I Deliver and 90 Degree Fuzzwalk, including spoken word lyrics from Phoebe One (apparently a London MC of some note). Cool, but as mentioned, all kinda' rambly from an album perspective too, lacking something heavier to stand out from the quickly overcrowded downtempo scene of the mid-'90s.

So I was quite surprised and thrilled to hear Mish Mash go down more techno roads in the back end of the album. Aw man, do I loves me some '90s tribal reggae dub techno. While I wouldn't put Rockers' efforts above those of PWoG and Bandulu, cuts like breakbeaty Paths Of Life, deep groover One With Another, and jungly Queen Of The Ghetto (Ghetto Defendant) are worthy companions to that specifically niche style. Not so much the funk-sampling Copycat (Follafashiondropoffaconkatree) though, but I had to namedrop it here just so you could see how ridiculous the track's subtitle is.

A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders

Jive: 1993

The debate of what, officially, marks the true end of the Golden Age Of Hip-Hop is one that will forever rage to the end of... Well, not humanity, but at least whenever this style of music has completely faded out of public consciousness. However long recorded sound formats are maintained, at least. I'm more curious of what folks would consider the Last Of The Records of this era though, which I'm sure is just as contentious a topic as demarcating a hard-line border to its end. Having finally dug through A Tribe Called Quest's discography (scant though it be), I can't help but feel Midnight Marauders must be up there in the discussion.

Yeah, yeah, a record released late '93 couldn't possibly be such – didn't the Golden Age last well past that? Probably, and I'm not discounting the albums that came after. I feel like those are outliers though, releases that bucked against a general trend in how the culture was evolving rather than defining it. When people talk about records that 'changed the game' - specifically emphasizing street hustle and thuggery with crossover appeal - a lot of those came out in '94 and beyond. Whereas Tribe's third effort feels like a cap on the more thoughtful, conscious, almost innocent side of the genre. Like, when I think of a 'golden age' of hip-hop, it's when all styles were still on equal footing, peacenik lyricists having just as much presence as gangsta' posturing, with plenty of room for variants between.

Anyhow, Midnight Marauders moves the Tribe into slicker territory compared to The Low End Theory, which isn't surprising in the slightest. The previous record seemed almost a fluke of serendipitous creativity, fusing vintage jazz music with hip-hop rhythms. A trick so simple in concept, but so difficult in pulling off while retaining not just critical plaudits, but approving nods from the brothers on the street. How do you even follow that up?

Well, you gotta' maintain that jazzy vibe, no doubt. The cello bass action, the trumpet solos, the flute loops, and so on. Yet they don't seem so obvious and in the forefront as before, heavier emphasis on rugged rhythms and turntable scratchin'. Almost as though Tribe were fully aware of how aggro hip-hop was evolving, so doing what they could to keep pace without losing the laid back identity they'd built for themselves. And lo', it works wonderfully, once again striking a remarkable balance between sounding contemporary without dishonouring the music that inspired them.

Lyrical topics, then? Mostly treading familiar territory, Q-Tip the chill everyman while Phife Dawg gives us a taste of the seedier side of Queens without getting too deep in the gunk. Also, lots more shout-outs to fellow rappers, which seems almost novel given the growing competitive animosity the scene was cultivating at the time. Hmm, maybe that's why Tribe rather faded after this record, unwilling to get caught up in all that mamma-drama. Folks liked their rap drama, after all.

Natural Life Essence - Micro Ambient/MicroAmbient 2

CYAN/Liquid Frog Records: 2019/2021

Can't have a 'macro' without first having a 'micro'. I mean, you technically could, but generally speaking, folks start with the 'micro' before moving on to the 'macro'. Concepts of 'micro' are so common, it's permeated pop culture far more than 'macro'. Gander: microscope, microwave, micro-organism, microphone, Microsoft. Now try flipping those with a 'macro'. Don't work, do it? Instead we get telescope, or mega fauna, or comedy-sized microphone, or Evil Corpo'. Heck, even in units of measurement, we have micrometres and micro-litres, but no 'macro' variant, just 'mega'.

Even if we are to accept 'macro' as an opposite measurement against 'micro', where exactly does the demarcation end and begin? Size is all relative, right? Typically we take a normal human as the median, everything larger being 'macro', and anything smaller being 'micro', which is fair enough. Sure, its completely biased to our perspective, but we're the ones measuring things to our scale. Should we encounter something more dominate than the scale we use, I'm sure we'd appropriately adjust. Or not, stubbornness one of humanity's defining characteristics.

So where does that leave ambient music? Like, it's easy to point out when something sounds 'micro' versus 'macro' (or whatever specific terminology you wish to utilize) - if I was to play a 36 piece after an Andrew Heath composition, the contrast would be stark indeed. At what point does noodly synth drones pass from the 'micro' to the 'macro' though? Can't help but feel like that's one of those impossible lines to pin down, something entirely subjective to interpretation and perspectives of one's own experience with the music. If anyone can point towards The Perfect Ambient Track That Divides Between The Micro & The Macro, let me hear it!

ANYhow, Juan Pablo released the first Micro Ambient while he was still peddling his wares through CYAN, so fairly early into N:L:E's lifespan. I wouldn't really call the music offered on this album especially 'micro', mostly bright synth pads performed in a minimalist fashion – more meditative than anything. I guess compared to his regular output to this point, it's more pure ambient than his forays into downbeat, but even tracks like Micro-Path and Micro-Lake have enough of a rhythmic pulse to keep these being an entirely lowercase session. They sure wouldn't sound of place on one of the Macro Ambient albums.

You'd think Mr. Giacovino would reassess what a 'micro ambient' album should entail after exploring the 'macro' side of things, and he kinda' does with the sequel. MicroAmbient 2 is certainly more subtle compared to the first, though not without its own rhythmic moments too. Just, y'know, performed in a smaller fashion compared to most other N:L:E music.

Having listened to all these 'micro' and 'macro' ambient session, I find the first is the best, if for no other reason than it feels more like a complete album. Which makes sense, since it was released on a different label than Juan Pablo's own.

Avith Ortega - Metastasis

self-release: 2018

(a Patreon Request)

I've known Mr. Ortega for a while now. Not personally or anything like that, but the typical social media connection chatter that occurs when folks cross paths via similar interest groups. Felt it necessary to at least clear that up, just in case some folks claim 'paid for' bias or whatever in covering a Patreon request from him. Silly, I know, but there's always someone like that out there.

That said, I honestly had no idea what sort of music made up his repertoire. For some reason, I assumed techno, just because that was typically the sort of music most producers made in those circles – maybe something a little IDM leaning? Glancing at the cover art for Metastasis, however, that notion quickly evaporated. A style colder, then, perhaps reflective, moody, atmospheric. Ah, dub techno, right? Not right? Well gosh, better just listen to the darn thing.

So first track Dissemination Of A Belief is little more than a small slice of dark drone, the sort of thing that would open any number of Cryo Chamber albums. That's followed upon by Unfortunate Destiny, which is relatively moody as well, but with its trip-hop rhythms and warbly synth leads, really lends itself to a Boards-like vibe. Not so on the nose as, say, Faex Optim, but definitely sharing the same lane. So, wait, is Metastasis gonna' be a dark ambient excursion or a melancholic shoe-hop session? A little of both!

Actually, what this really is, is music inspired by the Silent Hill series. I've never played the games, but I know plenty about them through gaming culture osmosis, and with that knowledge going through Metastasis on a second playthrough, it makes total sense. All during my first run, I couldn't help but feel like I was listening to music from some sort of psychological thriller anime, what with most tracks lasting but a few minutes long. Tone would sometimes radically shift too, a caustic piece like An Erratic Entity jumping to something almost peppy and chipper in Palliative Room with but a brief spit of sonic doodling in Surrounding Dense Breeze between. As said, I've never played any Silent Hill, but I've played more than enough games to have situations change on a dime with music supporting such tonal switches.

Guess that brings the question whether you need to be a fan of Silent Hill to enjoy Metastasis. As someone who didn't make that initial link but still got the vibe regardless, I'd say no. That said, this album probably works best taken as a collection of pieces inspired and intended for an unrealized game or show rather than its own entity. At eighteen tracks long and not even an hour runtime, many sections will pass by as little more than window dressing or transitional snippets bridging the set pieces together. Like, holy cow, but am I ever wandering about some pre-rendered city backdrop as a low-polygon character while Morbid Curiosity plays out! No, wait, that's Legend of Dragoon.

Mindsphere - Mental Triplex: Presence - Mindream - Beyond

Suntrip Records: 2016/2017/2020

Instead of releasing three separate albums over a span of four years, Ali Akgün settled for nothing less than a trilogy magnum opus. Which means, for the sake of brevity, I can knock off three more Suntrip CDs for the price of one review! Eh, you say I'm not doing his artistic vision justice in giving Every. Single. Album its fair shake? Now, now, I know you don't really believe that. It's Suntrip we're dealing with here, a label we're well versed with the ins and outs by now. When I say, “Mental Triplex offers more neo-goa trance music as you'd expect from Suntrip”, that about sums it up, doesn't it. All that's left are some particulars and call it a day.

Actually, that's only true for two of these, which is a relief. Yeah, there's differences between Presence and Beyond, but only if you're versed enough in psy trance's micro genre aesthetics to notice them. The third album out of three though, Mindream, does something I've never heard any Suntrip session do: it's an honest-to-Ra chill-out album! Holy cow, I've heard, maybe, three proper downtempo tunes out of the label's entire catalogue thus far. What sort of favours did Ali have to pull to get the green light on that? Oh, that whole 'I'm making a concept trilogy, one part of which requires some slow time' idea. Not to say there potentially aren't other chill-out CDs in Suntrip's discography, but having gone through more than half of it now, odds are growing ever more slight on that.

What's actually weird about this, is that Mindream is the middle album out of this trilogy. Usually a downtempo disc would be the last, representing the comedown of a heavy night out. It makes sense as a follow-up to Presence, your standard end-to-end round of retro goa from Suntrip. Mindsphere's style is fairly simple, sometimes leaning into regular ol' trance, and never needlessly complicated or overstuffed with excessive wibble. I could see his tunes sharing compilation duty on an old school CD with the likes of Psygone and Bypass Unit.

So Ali follows that with a chill-out album, but instead of going with psy-chill or psy dub as most of his contemporaries would, he goes retro here as well. Like, way retro. I'm talkin' Jarre retro! Not really Berlin School or New Age retro, mind you, most of the tunes on Mindream still featuring squiggly synths or burbly acid straight out of the Megadog era. There's just as much prominence of sweeping modern classical synths and simple pulsing sequencers though, blurring the line of where Klause Schulz and downbeat Astralasia meet.

So where does that leave CD3 of the Mental Triplex trilogy? Out on a limb, if I'm honest, Beyond basically carrying on where Presence left off. It's still retro goa, just more on the trippier, psy side of the genre. Again, perfectly fine stuff, but even less to talk about within the context of the whole package.

Paleowolf - Megafauna Rituals

self-release: 2017

When I first – and last – covered Paleowolf, this was his most recent item, one that stuck with me for years. “If I ever return to this project,” thought I, “this is the album I'll get first!” And sure, it took me many years to actually get around to it, but by g'ar, I was true to my word. He's since released many more albums, including a pseudo-sequel called Cenozoic (all the tracks titles are also megafauna of the paleolithic era), but that's barely scratching the surface of what Scorpio V has done since.

Yeah, there's still Metatron Omega, the dark ambient project that first got him noticed by Cryo Chamber. Seems from that and Paleowolf, he found inspiration from all manner of Indo-Asia-European ritualistic cultures. You got Monasterium Imperi, Shogun's Castle, Gaetir The Mountainkeeper, Grailknight, Forest Of Yore (more of a Celtic ambient thing), and Orkforge. Yes, Orkforge, as in World Of Warcraft beasties! Gotta' get that dungeon synth side-project some sort of wicked-cool handle, right?

Anyhow, Megafauna Rituals. We'll never know with certainty what relationship pre-history humanity had with the largest animals of their era had, but we've made many educated guesses. Paleowolf seems intent on exploring the parts of our psyche that not only saw these massive beasts as potential sources of resources, but on equal footing within the food chain, both the hunters and the hunted, depending on how pissed off you'd make them. Perhaps even drawing upon their instinctive prowess in getting psyched for some pagan dance. A time when there were no need for heavenly gods, for they already walked among you as the lords of your terrain.

Which is why opening with a track like Aurochs seems a little weird to me. If you don't know, the aurochs were essentially the prehistoric ancestor to the modern domesticated bovine. Certainly an important animal in the legacy of civilization, but not one that I'd imagine inspires fear or reverence in prehistoric man. Then again, they were often depicted in cave drawings, so what do I know? Guess when I think megafauna, I'm thinking cave bears and dire wolves and sabertooth cats and megalacerosesesesss. Them auroch bulls were big, but not mammoth big, y'know?

Aside from Totem, which mostly utilizes chants, Megafauna Rituals is broken between two types of tracks: deep meditative pieces, and 'getting hype for the hunt' drumming ones. Unsurprisingly, the pieces with predator titles (Sabertooth, Direwolf) prominently feature the latter, while the ones with herbivore animals (Aurochs, Megalaceros, Mammoth) the former. Surprisingly, Cavebear seems to straddle the two, but I guess how you'd deal with one of them depends on how ornery they are that given day. And yes, there are sounds of the animals within these tracks too, though typically brief, subdued and distant. Like, you're out here celebrating their existence, but you sure don't want them getting near your camp fire either.

As for the rest of Paleowolf, hopefully it won't be another Ice Age before I return to him.

Fatima Al Qadiri - Medieval Femme

Hyperdub: 2021

I'll never fake the UK funky on claiming I know all the ins and outs on whatever the post-dubstep, future garage, grime-trap, micro-genre demarcations of that scene entail. Even the dedicated bloggers and scribes that broke sonic styles down to the quantum level never seem confident they've properly classified everything out there. Have you any idea what levels of autistic you'd have to be to do so? For sure I'm partially on the spectrum, and no way in Hell I care about this stuff to such a degree.

Which may be why I was drawn to this particular album from Fatima Al Qadiri on Hyperdub. I was already browsing about the label's Bandcamp in search of music outside my comfort zone, which you can always count on with this famed print. Yet something hit me as remarkably familiar when I clicked a few samples on Medieval Femme. I couldn't immediately place it though, so the only way to figure it out further was to buy the darn record, give it some uninterrupted attention. Well, such as my attention can remain uninterrupted these days...

Fatima had already shown an ear for more 'ethnically' charged bass music, her debut on Hyperdub (Asiatisch) drawing influence from the Far East even though she hailed from the Far Afro-West (Senegal). Even her less adventurous first EP on UNO - Genre-Specific Xperience - couldn't help but have an exotic flair to it from all the steel drum sounds utilized. No matter what μ-genre folks have tried placing her in (Juke! Grime! Electro! Leftfield! Deconstructed club...?), one thing that's been consistent is an ethereal overtone to her works.

And I think that's what drew me into Medieval Femme over her other albums. This one leans about as heavy into that sound as anything I sampled from her catalogue. Yeah, there's exotic instruments, haunting vocalizations, and sinewy synths, but all presented in a dense layer of ethereal atmosphere. In fact, save a single track that has barely a minute's worth of electronic beat (Sheba), there's absolutely nothing on here that could tie the music to any of UK bass' usual assortment of styles. The layers of decaying dub, you say? Yeah, that could connect to Hyperdub's more experimental branch of artists, but is often still tied to the streets of South London, not so alien and foreign as heard on Medieval Femme.

Still, even if Fatima's music here didn't sound Hyperdub familiar, it did sound familiar in another way. A Waveform way, surprisingly. Yes, if I had to make any comparison to other music within my own collection, Medieval Femme reminds me of that label's brief flirtation with meditative exotica acts like TUU and Skin To Skin, though with a more Arabic bent. Not that these are the only artists to do it, just the ones I can namedrop in an instant. Take that for what you will, but regardless, Medieval Femme remains an intriguing record, even if it doesn't tidily fit within Hyperdub's general sound.

Mondo Grosso - 何度でも新しく生まれる

Cutting Edge: 2017

(a Patreon Request)

All these requests for Shinichi Osawa projects have remained chronologically consistent, each following the next as they came out. Now we're a dozen years later, as though the prior decade never was. I get it though, the time between Next Wave and 何度でも新しく生まれる possibly some of his most publicized work.

The One released under his own name penetrated Western markets, not to mention high profile remix jobs for the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Felix Da Housecat, and Duck Sauce (don't deny it, the Armand van Helden novelty side-project was huge at the time). Meanwhile, back in his home country, ol' Osawa-san was having a remarkable run with a bevy of j-pop singers. I'm talkin' Namie Amuro, Nami Tamaki, and Ai Otsuka! Okay, I don't know if these ladies are the tippest of the top, my knowledge of idol singers utterly bunk, but if Wiki says they're popular, I believe it. Oh, and Shinichi even got involved with one of those Korean multi-person troupes too (After School), because of course he would.

Point being, he was plenty busy following his last Mondo Grosso album, and didn't seem likely returning to his first project anytime soon. Still, that urge to get back to making music with a 'classier' edge, house on a deeper level, jazz on a soulful vibe... None of that maximal electro-pop that was making him bank, in other words. I guess after spending so much time immersed within mainstream decadence, getting back to a sound with some intimate emotion was growing ever more urgent. Must be why he titled the Mondo Grosso comeback Reborn Again And Always Starting New. And yes, I promise to refer to this album as such for the remainder.

Actually, I'm rather shocked at just how Japanese this album is. Oh, the music is mostly 'western', in so much as any house or soul music in the Land Of The Rising Sun can be. Yet all the featured singers stick to the native tongue, all the guest musicians are local, and the whole presentation feels specifically catered to folks living on the island. Absolutely no hope or pretense of having Reborn... make any impact on foreign markets, a far cry from the early days of Mondo Grosso getting rinsed by American house DJs. Yet if this was a tactful marketing ploy, the trick worked, the record earning Shinichi his highest Japanese chart action ever. Okay, not as high as his singles with pop idols, but you get what I mean.

So ...Always Starting New is certainly a classy album, but I can't help feel almost too much. Despite offering house ranging from deep-tech to opulent disco, with vibrant R&B between, it doesn't leap out much either. The wild swings of genre dabbling heard in those other Mondo Grosso records has been jettisoned for music that's safe and comforting. Which is fine if that's the aim, and I'm sure Shinichi's at an age where exploring such eclecticism isn't as interesting. Just loses some of the unexpected thrill the process, y'know?