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Hedflux & Grouch Collaborations Luminus Music Tracklist: 1. Lumination (Original Mix) 2. Mehndi Moller (Hedflux Remix) 3. Catharsis (Grouch Remix) 4. Lumination (Nanosphere Remix) 5. Luminatiion (Brujo's Bowl Remix) 6. Reverse Entropy (Hedflux Remix) Now, I'll give a listen to anything from Grouch. Ninety percent of the time the guy is a fantastic producer, taking that sometimes sludgy Zenon sound and injecting it with funk, dub and sexy slow-grooving magic, adding a whole lot of life and energy to the style. I'll also give Brujo's Bowl my undivided attention. While not a fan of his Zenon approach - often times it's too slow and heavy in mood - I'm a big fan of his Healing With Sound album and where I don't expect to get that same sort of dub loveliness I'll tune in just out of respect. On this six-track EP, for those two producers who usually bristle with creativity, their offerings are very unexpected. If this were lousy work Collaborations could be forgiven but for the artistic talent involved the worst judgement that can be passed upon it, the most dreadful thing you can say to an artist about their work, is that it is common. Even worse, this EP is common by design. The main focus here is the original Hedflux & Grouch collaboration (previously released in 2012) on "Lumination" and the two remixes offered up by Nanosphere & Brujo's Bowl. File each of these away under generic clubby psytrance progressive, the kind of tracks that do just enough to sound good for the first minute or two and then spend the rest of their time in existence going around the same circle of mediocrity. No depth, no attempts at creativity and no amount of mind-altering is going to make these duds sound satisfying no matter how loud you turn them up. In fairness, Nanosphere comes closest to quality with a mid-track creative explosion that brings a whole of interesting movement to a very unsatisfying song structure. Then, of course, lest we forget the club kids can't keep up if things get too complex (at least I'm assuming that's the mindset here) the track settles back in to the original preset structures and dull progressive sound effects of the original. Where Grouch remixes Hedflux' "Catharsis" and Hedflux remixes Grouch's "Mehndi Moller" it is just the same sort of forgettable blandness. Things get interesting on the last track of the EP, where Hedflux remixes "Reverse Entropy" (from Grouch's excellent Further album) and the moment is quite nice for a bit. Of course, it's nice because it is pretty much exactly the Grouch original and where things go wrong is where Hedflux ups the tempo and breaks the hypnotic spell, shunning creative genius for progressive neutering. As with most progressive club parties, the best thing about this one is the art - absolutely captivating, highly imaginative, UV reactive beauty. You can stop, take it in for a while, bask in its mystery, there's a whole lot of nice depth in there. But then the music starts and you may just end up wondering how art so deliciously psychedelic ends up dressing music that is nowhere near psychedelic enough. Luminus Music