Astrix - He.Art

[Trance2MoveU]

 

Artist: Astrix

Title: He.Art

Label: HOM-Mega Productions

Date: February, 2016

 

1. Shamanic Tales

2. Deep Jungle Walk

3. Alien Turned Human

4. Valley of Stevie (with Ace Ventura)

5. He.Art

6. Agate (with Ritmo)

7. Sapana (Album Version)

8. Awake The Snake (with Tristan)

9. Juno Reactor - Conquistador (Astrix Remix)

10. He.Art (Continuous Mix)

 

 

Jeez, get a room.

 

Used to love He-man. Had all the action figures (call them dolls and I'm gonna punch you in the face). Beast-man, Skeletor...even had Castle Grayskull. Looking back I never realized how homo-erotic those things were. Figured they just had a lot of muscles, and the tv show didn't help. But like a lot of sh*t you outgrow it. Soon girls became the main focus and no chick is going to date a dude who has a bunch of these things lying around.

 

Like those toys, I feel I also outgrew Astrix. Sure I loved Eye to Eye when it came out, but musical tastes change and listening to it now just leaves me wanting more. Doesn't hold up, and while he was always into the full-on, he seems to have acquired an even more commercial sound with subsequent albums.

 

 

So when this was passed on to me I gave it the full Leonard Nimoy. It says Astrix on the cover, but this doesn't sound like him. Hell listening to the uber-long opener it sounds like he kidnapped Simon Posford and got him duct taped in the trunk. Very tribal and mystical with loads of changes. Deep Jungle continues the deeper exploration of sound and it's very refreshing. Valley of Stevie was a more aggressive style of full-on and Sapana had a bunch of weird sounds, but finished on a strong, growly note. And that break was sick.

 

I liked where he was going with the Conquistador remix, even after the triplets showed up. The whole album is deeper and more detailed than expected. Sure sometimes he reverts back to the full-on dude we always knew him to be (He.Art, Awake the Snake), but this was a really great effort that I didn't see coming. If you get the CD you get artwork of course, a sticker, and a poster. If you get the digital format you get a continuous mix of the entire album. Decisions decisions.

 

 

 

Beatspace

 

Psyshop

[Starkraver]

If you get the CD you get artwork of course, a sticker, and a poster. If you get the digital format you get a continuous mix of the entire album. Decisions decisions.

Poster? From psyshop? I did not receive any poster or even a sticker. Poster of the artwork?

[voice of all]

album is great actually.

after all time of dealing with more proggy stuff Astrix returned to dynamic and bold sound wich is surely essential for him.

this style was and still remaining the music that he is king of.

im very fond of this release.

especially 1-3 and 7-9 tracks.

highly recomended to all who likes super high quality dancefloor stuff with best melodic and engine solutions.

[antic604]

Wasn't really grabbed by the samples but above reviews and several weeks in top spot on Psyshop's TOP100 list convinced me to purchase it... Should've trusted my instincts, though

 

I mean it's fine, prog-influenced full-on with jumpy & swing bass-lines, an OK melodies, some tribal chants, acid lines, lots of breaks & build-ups, etc. ...but there's so much nothing in there! There are stretches of emptiness, when literally nothing is going on, as if he accidentally muted some tracks on the mixer / sequencer... It's also pretty sparse and bare bones musically, i.e. the chord progressions are very predictable & overused and you can usually tell the change from miles away. Many of the samples we've heard on numerous world / chill CDs already and number of them is really annoying (i.e. countdown in Spanish or aeroplane sound engine as a build up - really?!?!), changes in tempo / measures get on the nerves and constant fading / filtering in / out of certain tracks quickly gets tiresome.

 

If you're looking for something similar - a prog-influenced melodic full-on - but better, try U-Recken's "Flames of Equilibrium" that even if not perfect is miles ahead in style and execution.

3/5 on a good day.

 

 

 

@Trance2MoveU - get on with the program & add polls to your reviews, please Some people can't be bothered to write anything, but at least they'd leave feedback that way.

[recursion loop]

 

If you're looking for something similar - a prog-influenced melodic full-on - but better, try U-Recken's "Flames of Equilibrium" that even if not perfect is miles ahead in style and execution.

Yeah, I've got these two albums at about the same time, and while U-Recken is still in my playlist and will stay there forever i think, I've listened to He.Art only once. And I generally like both prog and full-on and like Astrix' earlier output. Maybe I should give it second listen but as for now I don't feel any motivation to do so. Same with Paradise Engineering, btw, they are very similar in that they show flawless production but not much fresh ideas.

[antic604]

I'm embarrassed to admit that, but I'm returning to this album quite a lot recently 

 

I'm not sure why that is, but there's a mix of simplicity, in-your-face(edness) and energy that somehow captivates me. It's just like with the movies - it's clear that "The Shining" or "A Clockwork Orange" are artistically superior, deeper and have some actual intellectual message, but once in a while it's fun to watch a Jean-Claude van Damme movie: you cringe at the details, direction or dialogue but it's able to deliver a rush of excitement when all stars align. It's still 3/5 IMO, but it delivers on fun if you don't expect it to do more than that.

[Tsotsi]

Still the prog album I find myself going back to again and again.