various artists / speicher cd 2 / kompakt

Michael Mayer is here to demonstrate, once again, his skills of big-room, crowd-pleasing quality control. While Speicher 1 was a bit hard and trance-y for some (well, at first, since so many Kompakt-heads came around to digging it eventually), Speicher CD 2 is the ideal mix of the deep, classic Kompakt-style techno naturally evolving into new hard, double A-side Speicher-style rockers. (With a lot more of what I can only describe as Mayer-style tracks and mixing -- throbbing, smart tracks with new twists on classic ideas and lots of personality...and of course so well placed in a way that resembles an ideal live set.)

As a CD it sits somewhere between Speicher CD1 and the Mayer Fabric 13 mix. Musically it's starting deep in classic Kompakt-style, going into long rocking tracks with lots of beautiful atmosphere, then ending with some big-room Schaffel jams.
listen: x - michael mayer
listen: kontakt - reinhard voight

stephan mathieu / on tape / hapna

With On Tape (recorded on the occasion of a live performance at Fylkingen, Stockholm in Febuary of 2004), Stephan Mathieu could have very easily done a conventional remix of Tape material using the various filtering and processing techniques that he has become so comfortable with over his extensive back catalog. Instead, this release marks a new direction for Mathieu. Sidestepping his usual approach, On Tape sees him concentrating solely on the editing and layering of the source material. Rather then obscuring the origin, Mathieu uses the unprocessed source material supplied by Tape, saxophonist Magnus Granberg, and along with some of his own percussion, to create a slowly evolving mass of sound. It's a deceptively simple and extremely rewarding approach that hones in on each minute detail breaking each sound and event down to its core before bringing it back into the whole.

Over the course of 30-minutes Mathieu transforms the piece from seemingly incidental sounds to almost ephemeral harmonics and back again without ever seeming too complicated or forced. Beginning with a swell of electronics and gradually adding tiny quiet events and layered saxophone and harmonium loops, the piece illustrates itself through such a natural evolution that the listener becomes less concerned with the overall process and simply focuses on the moment. An exceptionally fulfilling release that may take a little while to sink into, but given the time, will reward tenfold.
listen: on tape