seven

once a friend of mine, very far away from this style of music, said that the music has to have "beats" in order to be considered good. and this is all that matters - as long as it has steady "beats", it is fine and will undoubtedly find its public. not a very good beginning for a compilation review, is it? but the above is true, and first of all this is a club compilation, as the title says, so it is geared to the clubs, and this is where it will find a steady following and grateful audience.

one of the biggest pluses of "counterbalance" is that it has a consistent direction. all the tracks are aimed at the dancefloor, and they roughly are contained within the same aggressive danceable ebm style. I can compliment inception's knowledge of mass market and personal favorites of mr. switch. his taste is very clear on this compilation, and for better or worse he managed to bring a lot of new (for majority of the public) names to this compilation.

having said that, I sadly find myself unable to enjoy this compilation as much as I could have a few years back. once again, I might have been in this melting pot too long and generic rehashed variations of the same ebm approach are not even boring to me, they are simply annoying. I can see myself happily dancing to the tracks on this disk, but not seriously *listening* to it. "counterbalance" is more of a nostalgic experience, especially listening to (excellent, I have to say) mix of good ol' "feedback" by covenant, or strangely familiar, yet sadly unemotional and devoid of melody "w.w.w." by individual totem, or "faceless" and rigid "rift" by imperative reaction.

other contributions include punchy yet unimaginative "guilt" by protocol x, polished and damn catchy, yet so simple and predictable "torment" by lost signal, dense and heavy, yet again, (and you guessed it) predictable "flucht v.2" by cymotec. "slut", the only track on new l'ame immortelle's album that bothered the hell out of me and refused to leave my head for days, is back to haunt me here (it does have the "beats" though). some serious cloning efforts finally allowed icon of coil to break through into US markets by producing enough variations of the same catchy tune, so this time we are graced with frequency mix of "repeat it". sabotage was surprisingly… ok (and even more, probably due to apoptygma berzerk's mix of it), since I did not expect much after their terrifying appearance on "redemption" ep by flesh field. massiv in mensch is a credit to chris that pulled them for the north american market. parallel bears a name of alex matheu and sounds like latest negative format with heavier electro edge.

despite some of my negativity, I am sure there will be a lot of people out there that would enjoy this compilation due to many reasons; as for me, it's time to hear what new pan sonic has to offer...