healium Posted December 25, 2013 Share Posted December 25, 2013 Beat Bizarre - "Riot" 1. Beat Bizarre – Antikythera Mechanism (Original Mix)2. Beat Bizarre – Robofresh (Original Mix)3. Beat Bizarre – Swop (Original Mix)4. Beat Bizarre – Digisnort (Original Mix)5. Beat Bizarre – Tungsten (Original Mix)6. Beat Bizarre – Amplifucked (Original Mix) Review: Following up on their spectacular album "Mukharv" from 2012, Beat Bizarre releases a 6 track album in 2013. How does it stack up? Well, to start with, I'm a huge Beat Bizarre fan. In my opinion they have the market cornered on the dark, hypnotic, and highly groovy, sexy type sound. There's some other dark progressive artists out there, but they sure don't sound groovy or sexy - examples are Hypogeo and Barby - both of those artists make excellent dark progressive, but it isn't really slick, booty-shaking type music. Beat Bizarre has this wonderful combination, and this album is no exception. Not going to do a track by track review, but the first track reminds me a lot of the style on Mukharv, whereas the others do not. Every track is solid - in general this album is a bit more minimal than Mukharv, and often not as colorful. This is serious hypnotic head-trip music. The stand out track for me so far is "Tungsten" - awesome repeating vocal sample which reminds me of a track from Koxbox's album "The Great Unknown", along with a characteristic dark and heavy vibe, but punctuated by an absolutely soaring, angelic melody that loops throughout the track - there's so much emotion and atmosphere in this track. Overall this is a stellar effort - a bit short - only 6 tracks - maybe he could have waited till he had a couple more? Along with Frequenweschel and the Sensient album though this is the highlight of 2013 progressive trance for me. 91/100 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
healium Posted January 20, 2014 Author Share Posted January 20, 2014 I'm surprised this album hasn't got more attention - the album is short, but the tracks are each so killer - the atmospheres and details that BB creates are just phenomenal - and always with such a massively swanky darkness to it all. At different times each track is my favorite - right now I'm digging this one: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trancenonZENsedance Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 It seems this wasn't released as physical CD? download only? These are sad times... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
healium Posted January 20, 2014 Author Share Posted January 20, 2014 Here's an interview with Beat Bizarre/Martin Spanner - he talks about the whole digital download-only thing and the reasons for it - the English version of the interview is after the Polish version: http://www.psytrance.pl/interviews.php?title=beat_bizarreenglish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolmot Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 So...blame Iboga? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trancenonZENsedance Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 http://www.psytrance.pl/interviews.php?title=beat_bizarreenglish Thanks. So...blame Iboga? Who knows. I can certainly imagine that the border between "still profitable" and "too much risk with too little possible reward" is very hard to find for a release in rather small numbers and as a business a label is probably better safe than sorry. I'm sure there could be ways around this problem, but if noone (and I'm not excluding myself here) cares enough, I suppose the trend to download-only is going to continue. Blame capitalism/the world/the universe, I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
healium Posted January 21, 2014 Author Share Posted January 21, 2014 What's the issue with download only? I would think that like, 99% of the people who would buy the album anyway would have a ocmputer and be able to download it? It turns out that this album is actually an EP rather than an LP - lol, so it's a really long EP rather than a short lP. His tracks go on a long time - usually 9+ minutes, so I guess 6 tracks is just fine.. There's 2 levels of listening to Beat Bizarre - 1) his beats and rhythms are so fat and infectious that you can just groove out to the track - I find that the initial groove is so catchy and engaging that I often don't bother to really listen and go deep into the rest of the track. Which brings us to listening option 2) - get into the layers he builds in - there a ton going on, even if the first listen you miss most of it- and the way he repeats all the layers for so long, and just overall trippiness of the sounds themselves makes this music extremely psychedelic - this is truly mind-altering music if you can get into and follow the progression of his sound structures.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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