Material Music - Love & Magic (The Dust Album)

[Trance2MoveU]

Artist: Material Music
Title: Love & Magic (The Dust Album)
Label: Kali Earth Records
Date: May, 2018

1. Love & Magic
2. Thunderbrothers - Hausmania Jam
3. Ingenuity Box
4. Twitch Science
5. Jailhouse Suck
6. Space Out...and In
7. Return To Earth
8. Prabudda Jani

 

Professor Rabinowitz?  Umm...is my paper still due on Wednesday?

Like a lot of genres our particular brand of music has long been over saturated with subpar and generic sounding efforts. It's a copy and paste world these days and every high schooler (or middle aged psychology professor) with a pirated copy of Cubase is poised to make the next LSD.  More power to you, I wish you the best because it seems the world could use a little more LSD.  However we're still waiting and it seems that (and perhaps it has always been this way) the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  Promotion is the name of the game and nobody is going to toot your own horn like you can. 

Unintentional masturbatory pun.

So through repeated messages I reluctantly agreed to give this album a listen and share my pearls of wisdom that nobody seems to agree with.  It's not like the old days when I had nothing but time to write reviews on every file someone sent me.  I'm a busy man.

See?

So, taking myself away from a whole day's worth of nothing I found out who the hell this is an boy was I surprised.  Erland Yildiz is truly an inspirational story.  The music biz is rife with tropes about the perils of substance abuse and history is riddled with those who have succumbed to them.  He apparently has been making music for a long time, but fell victim to those forces and fairly recently got himself clean by going cold turkey.  I don't know what he was on or what he was going through, but you don't get free of those demons without a lot of strength and support so kudos to him.  Also to psytones for helping him shop his albums and getting his music out there.

This album is a compilation of tracks he made over time, some while sober some while not.  He clearly is proficient with the electronic wizardry with good layers, sound, and groove.  Here are a few notes I made after several listens.  The only quibble I have with some of the tracks is the excessive length without evolution. 

The title track is a churning progressive beast that clocks in at a hefty 15 minutes.  Good thumping track with a bit of goa sauciness at the end.  Felt it went on a little long though.  And that will be a theme here.

Hausmania Jam to me is filler that went on waaaay too long and seemed like a rough draft of a track  that he would get back to later.  Like...after nachos. 

Ingenuity Box is a psychedelic goa track that reminds me of something from COP.  If that's your style then this is for you.  Not bad at all.

Twitch Science sounded very rudimentary, but in an alluring way.  It also has that bubbling 303 beneath the surface so it's got that going for it.  I liked it the more I listened to it.

Jailhouse Suck has a funky house groove with some great tabla, but the mumbling underneath is a tad bit distracting. 

Space out is a psytrance progressive hybrid that flows with juicy layers.  More variation would've been nice, but still good.

Return to Earth is rather mellow and after listening to it 3 times I wasn't aware that I had listened to it.  Maybe it flew by because it was the shortest track on the album.

Prabudda Jani is pure Astral Projection multilayered in your face space goa.  Best track for me on the album that sounded like it could be from Global Sect Music.

So there you have it, a decent album that is available in digital or CD-R format and perhaps a welcome back to the scene of sorts for another artist. 

Kali Earth Records Bandcamp

 

[Penzoline]

Material Music

Who? Before you even had the chance to ask that question there was already a bunch of releases out. He seems to be (from what I've heard) an artist who's been producing music the same way I've been producing art. Making it, but never showing it. Which is always a great idea? Right? Right??

Love & Magic (The Dust Album) contains a variety of tracks that don't all conform under a psychedelic trance moniker. You hear some goatrance, some psytrance, some... old school house influenced sounds and generally a really wide-spectrum of I-just-want-to-make-music. Whatever anyone thinks of that, one thing is for sure - that it's a really mixed bag of sounds and themes.

 

Love & Magic is basically the magnum opus of Material Music. A 15 minute ride through a psychedelic fractal landscape. It's quite reminiscent of Jikkenteki with it's length and ever-evolving pace. I absolutely adore the bright synths and uplifting melodies that warp in half way through the track, really lifting it up higher. Later parts become more goay with acid lines. It's quite modern compared to what's following.

And suddenly Hausmania Jam breaks whatever excpectations you had and has a 90s spacey house sounds. At 11 minutes it's an enjoyable downtempo journey.

Ingenuity box is another psy/goatrancy tune, but again with a massive flavour of 90s with a slight breakbeat feel. It's another constantly evolving journey and in fact I have a hard hard time not imagining this in a suomisaundi party. The bassline is just so damn danceable. The production is addictive and really quite psychedelic. Lot's of weird sounds filling the aural landscape. I'd even call this a little foresty. Fantastic.

Twitch Science continues this road. It's quite suomi-style with a fat bassline and random sounds coming in and out. Much less melodic. What is becoming awfully clear is the album's soundstage is straight up old school. It's got that early 00's techno inspired psy sound.

Jailhouse suck, well, here's the old school really housy / techno sound. While not my favourite as it's sounds maybe even too raw, I can imagine this being a totally a key change in the dancefloor, to break up the pace.

Space out... and In brings back a floating old school goatrance sound. If ever missed hearing new old school goatrance, well here's your chance. I love the way this track is composed. The tempo is relentless, but it's still floaty and filled with great acidy sounds.

Return To Earth is really, really, really old sounding. Like the first Total Eclipse. I would almost argue this as a protogoa/trance spirited track. The melodies are surprisingly catchy and emotional. Easy to get lost into.

Well scratch what I about Love & Magic, Prabudda Jani is probably the most modern track on the album. We suddenly shifted from 92' to something like 2010's. This is kind of a more typical progressive psytrance with goa sounds. The sound is like going through space at an ever-steady pace. When the track explodes at certain points it's like passing a nearby galaxy with it's hard and bright synths.

Well, that was an experience. Like I've mentioned the sounds range from really early 90s to recent times. A few tracks are probably offputting to some(Jailhouse and Hausmania), but I'd whole-heartedly try this out. Especially for the old school references and the title track.  I think it's especially unfortunate this is easy to ignore as it wasn't on a big label and self-released. I'd love to experience this album live.

On my last note I also suggest checking his other lineup as well, this guy can really hold his own and the compositions are all really solid. There's just something epic about his sound.

[DJTeoma]

full support to this amazing release