seven

I have got my hands on this disk by accident before its official release date, and of course I could not pass an opportunity to mention it, hoping that any factual mistakes and discrepancies between this version and final release would not be too substantial to dramatically change my opinion about the album.

velvet acid christ is one of those bands that makes me work hard in order to abstract myself from the person behind the music in order to enjoy the music itself fully. this time it was a little harder than it used to be due to annoying samples that seldom do manage to work perfectly, but the rest of them annoy the hell out of me. same goes for the subject matter that, frankly, at times is a bit too damn childish.

it is amusing to speculate on the topic of how vac represents a snapshot of today's media culture, with his movie samples, genre changes, website ravings and so on. I still wonder how all that inclusion of popular culture references would work out a few years later down the road, when most of the movies will be forgotten and music genres would move further on.

but back to the music; apart from a few songs that had too many too old-school sounding pieces included into the fluid trancey mix, the album is a solid twisted, trippy and dark, contagious mixture of swelling trance passages, murky sequences, melodic and clean passages.

after listening to a healthy dose of psy-trance and goa myself since vac's latest release, I can only welcome his move into this direction. many would claim that this move has left too little of initial electro, replacing it with repetitive, slowly building trance passages (which, according to many purists, is not even pure trance to begin with, which of course is only a good thing, since brian is coming up with his own creative interpretation of trance elements and solid electro background) and I find that at most times it works perfectly, since the move into the trance genre demands those spacey, seemingly monotonous moves, that work great building a solid atmosphere that many musicians seem to oversee in the vain pursuit of insider's "coolness," getting carried away by perfecting the craft instead of building the music (on unrelated notice, the same paradox struck me comparing "axon" by skincage and latest yen pox).

but I digress again; as far as favorites go on this cd, I will start with "never worship" (already mentioned on my review of "we came to dance 2000") - an incredible swelling beginning that breaks out into beautifully orchestrated mix of dark strings, familiar distorted vocals, solid fluid percussion passages and catchy as hell overall atmosphere.

next on my list of favorites is "hypersphere (mdma)" - probably one of the closest to psy-trance tracks on this album. what makes it so good is the fact that it is yet another example of "splatter electro" style of vac, this time adding multiple twists and darker edge to the incredibly catchy and liquid trance movements. deep strings on certain parts of the song unexpectedly reminded me one of bjork's tracks (or maybe I am hearing things?). fast-paced, dark and flowing it is an instant dance hit. I could not help comparing it with last negative format that attempted to go the same direction, but the result, compared with this track, was overly "mechanical" and lacked the emotions this instrumental possesses. yet another track following this style is quite heavy "mindphyx (trip zone mix)" that features a few electro elements embedded into the dark trance passages that build slowly but persistently.

next is "dilaudid (postpoued)" featuring mellow female vocals contrasted by melancholic distorted brian's voice, and solid electro with a slight floating trancey touch. its "traditional" vac sound is similar to more upbeat and aggressive "lysergia" that seeps and advances with a mix of beautiful male chorus, creepy vocals and a few nicely fitting samples. overall, it is a good example of a mix of melodic dark electro, well placed synths and bass elements together with steady percussion.

torn by brian's vocals, twisted "dial 8" opens the world of trippy vac material; it is quite close to "fun with knives," being a melodic, dark track that has enough of brian's familiar anger and hatred to delight any old-school band fanatic.

all in all, I did like this album for a few excellent trance tracks that were incredibly addictive, the rest was a high-quality vac of "fun with knives" era - catchy, pleasant and very addictive. I will not rave about it as much as I used to about "fun with knives" that made it to my top 10 last year, but I would recommend this album to anyone that might enjoy dark electronic/dance music.