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Seb Fontaine - Prototype 4
I really liked Prototype #2, from its percussive proto tech house on disk 1 to its lush trance mix on the second disk. But the 4th comp left me scratching my head. Many of the songs had one annoying element in it (like a gay guy with a lisp going "OK everyone start your engines"), or were just extremely bland percussive techno tracks. There was the occasional quality Quivver-esque prog track thrown in there, and I loved the dark and sinister Junkie XL remix of Jpop idol Ayumi Hamasaki's "Vogue", but there was more bad than good.
Timo Maas - Balance 18
Picked this up on a whim, since I was a big Timo fan back in 2000 (thanks to the Prototype #2 album mentioned above funny enough). But Timo's new sound just bored the shit out of me. The first quarter of the first disk sounded very promising, with some quality tracks dripping with atmosphere, including one of the few minimal songs I like (DJ Koze's remix of Matthias Kaden's Kawaba), but the rest of it is so bland and forgettable.
John Digweed - GU Los Angeles
Wait... put down the pitchforks! It's not that this is a bad album, but I have very high expectations for Diggers and this is content to stay in the realm of dark, raw, stripped-down prog for the most part, never quite reaching the highs of MM2, GU Hong Kong, or Bedrock.
Sasha and Digweed - Communicate
There's no question that the Northern Exposure series is LEGENDARY among EDM fans. So when I heard Sasha and Digweed were teaming up for another comp, I was ecstatic. But this was during the period when trance of the cheddar variety was blowing up worldwide (no disrespect since I love late 90's trance too :P) and S+D were desperate to not be carried along with the tide. So to stand out they went a lot more proggy (and to a lesser extent, techy) with this cut. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you, but it seemed to have lost the experimentation and the Northern Exposure series was known for, and there were even some parts where the mixing wasn't up to S+D's standard. There's still a couple of great cuts on it, namely Schiller - Ruhe (Humate mix), but out of all the pre-2005 S+D stuff this one is the one that I replay the least.
Nick Warren - GU Paris
Paris came out at the time when GU's relevance was waning, Nick Warren having yet another GU mixcomp was becoming a bit of a running gag, and prog was increasingly taking in more influences from electrohouse, minimal, and tech house. That being said, Reykjavik was one of my favorite albums ever, I enjoyed Shanghai too, and with the decline of melodic prog during the '07 year I was hoping this comp would re-ignite GU a bit. But it seems like I had some lofty expectations for this one... since it felt too disjointed. Disk 1 was Warren trying to recreate the magic from the downtempo, chilled disk 1 of Reykjavik, but it seemed to end prematurely and was missing the haunting melodies of aforementioned Reykjavik set. Disk 2 was a disjointed mess and there were a number of parts where the energy almost seemed to stop. It seemed like Warren was a bit confused where he wanted to take the mix, in a way that feels like a microcosm of the confusion where progressive house as a genre was going. I will say, choosing Eelke Kleijn's amazing track "8-Bit Era" as the peak was a great choice.
My biggest disappointment ever would have to be Sasha - Instant Live - Avalon, LA
Sasha has been a huge influence on my music tastes, wanting to get into DJing, and the like. When asked what my favorite mixcomp of all time is, I'll respond with GU Ibiza (or ISOS3). So, when this album dropped and I saw a copy at the now-defunct Borders I was all over it like white on rice. But the album was a technical mess. This was Sasha completely moving away from the progressive house that defined his career into a more minimal and tech house influenced path. Yet, he was still attempting to play out the tracks and do long, extended mixes like it was a prog set. The result was a bunch of bleepy bloopy tracks that went on for too long (like the Booka Shade remix of Lindstrom - "I Feel Space"). There are a few nuggets of gold here like the sleek, futurist electrohouse of Gus Gus - Mallflowers, or the bleak, post-apocalytpic minimal of Joel Mull - "Begun The End Has". Since this was a snippet of a liveset, the album lacked the intro - buildup - peaktime - outro of your typical Sasha sets and instead was a mess of different genres lacking cohesion. There were a few clangy mixes and even a spot where an equipment malfunction halted the music for a few seconds.
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9-9-99 Never Forget
Quarantine Music Festival 2020
All My Mixes!
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