Radio and online reviewer Alinta Krauth (pictured) writes perhaps the first internet reviews you'll find with correct (Australian) spelling. As seen on www.radiometro.com.au
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Carl Cox - "Black Rock Desert"
Carl Cox - "Black Rock Desert"
I’m 23 and I still struggle to tell the difference between the spellings of desert and dessert… and I wouldn’t really want to eat a black rock dessert that’s for sure… anyway, that’s completely off topic, what isn’t off topic, is Global Underground presenting Carl Cox’s latest tasty dessert, Black Rock Desert, a version of his desert doof at which around eight thousand boot and bikini wearing foot stompers rocked up to see Carl doing what he does best, in a red Mohican Indian headdress inside a giant metal egg suspended above the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, America.
….. What??
Don’t worry, Global Underground wouldn’t produce it if it wasn’t good – as one of the most well respected labels around today, GU was launched in 1996 and is responsible for releasing some of the most cutting edge dance music like James Lavelle’s UNKLE, made soundtracks for some of the world’s most popular TV shows such as CSI, and some of PlayStation’s biggest selling games, and, staged fantastic parties in some of the world’s most exotic locations. So Carl’s silver egg stint may sound a bit whacky, but it’s taken from his two hour set that was part of a week long festival known as the Opulent Temple, a community funded arts and music project that attracts around 48,000 people per year who pack their campervans full of raver pants, and any strange head gear they can find and head out into the blistering sun to pay homage to some of the most amazing artists of our time, giving up their own time for free. Carl himself even admits it cost him a lot of money to be able to be there to play for the masses, but he knew the vibe would be well worth it.
If you haven’t heard of Carl Cox then it may be best you leave your computer screen now and get thee to a music store for a culture injection. He came to fame in the late 80’s when he was dubbed the ‘Three Deck Wizard’ for playing three turntables at once as a hardcore and acid house DJ. He went on to tour almost everywhere and head two large record labels, Intec Records and 23rd Century Records. He went on to be the first person to be named number one DJ in the world on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJ poll in 1997.
The live bush festival vibe of the Opulent Temple festival means several things for this set when converted to the Carl Cox Black Rock Desert album. One, this week long American desert dance crazed stint may be hard to emulate in your own home, no matter how loud your neighbours let you play it before they call the police. However on the other hand, you can get a taste of what made the occasion so special, and if you’ve ever been lucky enough to be at a doof like this one before, you can keep the memories fresh in your mind with this CD. But these aren’t songs by Carl Cox, his Black Rock desert set list included a variety of amazing artists as Hijacker, Skylark, Onionz, Robbie Rivera, Abi Bah, Umek and Politeca. Haven’t heard of them? Good, prepare to have your mind blown.
Most tracks on this double disk set have a distinct Carl Cox flavour, like each of the artists is somewhat a protégé of his. It took me a couple of listens for it to grow on me, I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to just be backing music to my night in, or whether I wanted to rock out to it – it sort of sits in a crack between the two. The similarities between the songs meant that sometimes I was confused as to which I was listening to, and became distracted, waiting for the beat to change up a bit, but I imagine one would think differently when dancing up a storm in a desert. If you’ve ever seen pictures of what went on while Carl was playing this live, you’ll notice the great lengths everybody went to in order to dress up in the craziest attire they could think of; pigs face masks, tin heads, riding on rockets, faces covered in green paint, baubles of light hanging off heads, laser guns, feathers coming off faces in all directions, all of which must have given it a strangely tribal Mayan masquerade vibe. The music mimics this exactly with tribal beats, different drums and more chanting rather than singing – of which there is very little anyway. The songs are earthy, with simple melodies laid on top of each other until they build a wall of sound. The lack of lyrics gives more of a bush festival vibe to the first CD, whereas in the second CD the sounds build up with minor chords and islander style beats in songs such as Alex Dias’s ‘Scientific (Nato Medrado Remix)’, making this my favourite to shake limbs to.
This mix is quite profound, and you have to tip your hat to Carl’s ingenuity in finding these cutting edge, fresh songs and making them work in the strange barren setting that would have been the Black Rock Desert. It’s powerful in its simplicity, and helped a city kid like myself understand how location changes music. Play it next time you feel like dancing with your clan, or busting out the U-Haul and hauling it into the desert (after you hear this you just might be inspired to go!).
- Alinta Krauth
I’m 23 and I still struggle to tell the difference between the spellings of desert and dessert… and I wouldn’t really want to eat a black rock dessert that’s for sure… anyway, that’s completely off topic, what isn’t off topic, is Global Underground presenting Carl Cox’s latest tasty dessert, Black Rock Desert, a version of his desert doof at which around eight thousand boot and bikini wearing foot stompers rocked up to see Carl doing what he does best, in a red Mohican Indian headdress inside a giant metal egg suspended above the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, America.
….. What??
Don’t worry, Global Underground wouldn’t produce it if it wasn’t good – as one of the most well respected labels around today, GU was launched in 1996 and is responsible for releasing some of the most cutting edge dance music like James Lavelle’s UNKLE, made soundtracks for some of the world’s most popular TV shows such as CSI, and some of PlayStation’s biggest selling games, and, staged fantastic parties in some of the world’s most exotic locations. So Carl’s silver egg stint may sound a bit whacky, but it’s taken from his two hour set that was part of a week long festival known as the Opulent Temple, a community funded arts and music project that attracts around 48,000 people per year who pack their campervans full of raver pants, and any strange head gear they can find and head out into the blistering sun to pay homage to some of the most amazing artists of our time, giving up their own time for free. Carl himself even admits it cost him a lot of money to be able to be there to play for the masses, but he knew the vibe would be well worth it.
If you haven’t heard of Carl Cox then it may be best you leave your computer screen now and get thee to a music store for a culture injection. He came to fame in the late 80’s when he was dubbed the ‘Three Deck Wizard’ for playing three turntables at once as a hardcore and acid house DJ. He went on to tour almost everywhere and head two large record labels, Intec Records and 23rd Century Records. He went on to be the first person to be named number one DJ in the world on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJ poll in 1997.
The live bush festival vibe of the Opulent Temple festival means several things for this set when converted to the Carl Cox Black Rock Desert album. One, this week long American desert dance crazed stint may be hard to emulate in your own home, no matter how loud your neighbours let you play it before they call the police. However on the other hand, you can get a taste of what made the occasion so special, and if you’ve ever been lucky enough to be at a doof like this one before, you can keep the memories fresh in your mind with this CD. But these aren’t songs by Carl Cox, his Black Rock desert set list included a variety of amazing artists as Hijacker, Skylark, Onionz, Robbie Rivera, Abi Bah, Umek and Politeca. Haven’t heard of them? Good, prepare to have your mind blown.
Most tracks on this double disk set have a distinct Carl Cox flavour, like each of the artists is somewhat a protégé of his. It took me a couple of listens for it to grow on me, I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to just be backing music to my night in, or whether I wanted to rock out to it – it sort of sits in a crack between the two. The similarities between the songs meant that sometimes I was confused as to which I was listening to, and became distracted, waiting for the beat to change up a bit, but I imagine one would think differently when dancing up a storm in a desert. If you’ve ever seen pictures of what went on while Carl was playing this live, you’ll notice the great lengths everybody went to in order to dress up in the craziest attire they could think of; pigs face masks, tin heads, riding on rockets, faces covered in green paint, baubles of light hanging off heads, laser guns, feathers coming off faces in all directions, all of which must have given it a strangely tribal Mayan masquerade vibe. The music mimics this exactly with tribal beats, different drums and more chanting rather than singing – of which there is very little anyway. The songs are earthy, with simple melodies laid on top of each other until they build a wall of sound. The lack of lyrics gives more of a bush festival vibe to the first CD, whereas in the second CD the sounds build up with minor chords and islander style beats in songs such as Alex Dias’s ‘Scientific (Nato Medrado Remix)’, making this my favourite to shake limbs to.
This mix is quite profound, and you have to tip your hat to Carl’s ingenuity in finding these cutting edge, fresh songs and making them work in the strange barren setting that would have been the Black Rock Desert. It’s powerful in its simplicity, and helped a city kid like myself understand how location changes music. Play it next time you feel like dancing with your clan, or busting out the U-Haul and hauling it into the desert (after you hear this you just might be inspired to go!).
- Alinta Krauth
"Airport" Mixed by Sied van Riel and Trent McDermott.
"Airport"
CD Mixed by Sied van Riel and Trent McDermott.
When I popped in to the Radio Metro office after my two month European holiday and they placed the CD ‘Airport’, mixed by Sied Van Riel and Trent McDermott, in my hands, I figured it was some kind of joke. I looked at it’s blue and white cover with little graphic aeroplanes on it, and had a flood of memories concerning the amount of hours I sat in airports while planes were delayed due to a certain volcano, and the amount of hours standing in trains and trams with a 20kg backpack on my back getting to those darn places. When you put the words ‘music’ and ‘airports’ together, certain connotations come to mind, none all that great. For me, it’s long waits in uncomfortable seats listening to distasteful elevator type muzak, or it’s listening to nothing at all, looking at your friends who have their bloody iPhones all listening to music while you’re sitting there muttering at them under your breath and eating, eating, eating to pass the time.
And when you hear the first few mellow notes of the opening track True Romance (Brave Intro Mix) by Arctic Moon on the first of the two CDs, you start to worry that this might actually be the path that this album is taking, with its easy-listening, slow under-vibes, but a mere few seconds later your worries fade away as a more upbeat tempo trance beat fills your speakers. Trading in lyrics for solid yet flighty trance beats, this CD, mixed by Sied van Riel, will have you taking flight, lifting off the dancefloor with arms like the wings of aeroplanes. Each song has some kind of flying theme, some are obvious like Galen Behr’s Seconds Before We Landed With Our Eyes Closed, others more subtle like Aly & Fila’s My Mind Is With You (possibly referring to being a long distance away from someone who you love) and One day (Sied van Riel Remix) by Alex Armes, where the flights of fancy are deep set into the rhythm and tune itself.
Sied van Riel is the man who was named ‘the hottest producer around’ by Tiësto in 2008, and ‘the next big thing to hit trance’ by DJ Magazine, so he is well equipped for the job of mixing half of this massive compilation. Hailing from The Netherlands, he has already picked up several huge awards such as Trance Awards ‘Best New Face’. It only took him 12 months after his initial 2008 fly in to firmly qualify as a maestro of trance, playing over 60 incredible sets in one year, and fitting in spinning at 7 world class events in 9 days. So we can certainly say that Van Riel has been a busy boy, extending his legacy further by coinciding the release of ‘Airport’ with a huge Australasian tour. You may be thinking that this dude is a bit of a newbie, springing up barely two years ago, but let me give you a short history lesson – the trance genre wasn’t even properly named until the 1990’s, a combination of several other electronic genres such as industrial, techno and house, and is characterised by a beat that ranges between 130 and 155 BPM. Ok, lesson over, take your pen out of your mouth and stop daydreaming out the window because the fun stuff is returning.
Then comes the second CD… obviously… and this one is mixed by the flying Melbournian, Trent McDermott. MickeyD has definitely already flown into our hearts with his previous hits such as Let There Be Light, the Rank 1 classic that he co-remixed with tyDi. It may be easy to get a big head being known as ‘Melbourne’s number 1 trance export’, and being number 13 in Sony’s Inthemix top 50 DJ Poll, but McDermott still keeps his infamous underground integrity. He has been the support act to some of the biggest names in the world such as Tiësto, Paul van Dyk and Above & Beyond, just to name a few. This DJ, like many other talented musicians, is also big on the production front, and has a hot new collaboration with Binary Finary on this very CD called Freedom Seekers (Trent McDermott Mix).
McDermott’s choices on his mixed CD are, well, choice! He brings on board his friends Tiësto, Marco V, Yuri Kane, Chris Reese, Weekend Heroes, DJ Eco and Scot Mac, among others, to create a pumping trance CD packed to overflowing point with the essentials of fast but light beats, and melodic, consciousness-altering tunes that will induce a trance-like state on any dancefloor. Killer tracks: Tigran Oganezov Hurricane (Maarten De Jong Remix), and of course Tiësto, Love Comes Again (Bart Claessen Remix) and Binary Finary and Trent McDermott’s newie. Funnily enough, considering Van Riel’s Northern European heritage, and McDermott’s Southern Australian heritage, McDermott is choosing a lot of songs and remixes by people of Northern European descent, such as Firtich, Claessen, Maarten, Oganezov and Saenz. So perhaps their styles are not as far from each other as their countries!
All in all, a great album to take off to. An album collaborated by talented artists from all over the globe, coming together in one place. An album to listen to, no matter where you are, or where you’ve been in your life’s travels. I think I’ve finally figured out why it’s called ‘Airport’, airports are places that you take flight from, places where you say goodbye to an old life, places where you dream about holidays, places where you see loved ones that you haven’t seen for a long time. For some people they are places of hope, for others they are places where you freak out and worry that you are about to die in a sardine can in the air. But for all, they are places of heightened emotion, and this album encapsulates that.
- Alinta Krauth
CD Mixed by Sied van Riel and Trent McDermott.
When I popped in to the Radio Metro office after my two month European holiday and they placed the CD ‘Airport’, mixed by Sied Van Riel and Trent McDermott, in my hands, I figured it was some kind of joke. I looked at it’s blue and white cover with little graphic aeroplanes on it, and had a flood of memories concerning the amount of hours I sat in airports while planes were delayed due to a certain volcano, and the amount of hours standing in trains and trams with a 20kg backpack on my back getting to those darn places. When you put the words ‘music’ and ‘airports’ together, certain connotations come to mind, none all that great. For me, it’s long waits in uncomfortable seats listening to distasteful elevator type muzak, or it’s listening to nothing at all, looking at your friends who have their bloody iPhones all listening to music while you’re sitting there muttering at them under your breath and eating, eating, eating to pass the time.
And when you hear the first few mellow notes of the opening track True Romance (Brave Intro Mix) by Arctic Moon on the first of the two CDs, you start to worry that this might actually be the path that this album is taking, with its easy-listening, slow under-vibes, but a mere few seconds later your worries fade away as a more upbeat tempo trance beat fills your speakers. Trading in lyrics for solid yet flighty trance beats, this CD, mixed by Sied van Riel, will have you taking flight, lifting off the dancefloor with arms like the wings of aeroplanes. Each song has some kind of flying theme, some are obvious like Galen Behr’s Seconds Before We Landed With Our Eyes Closed, others more subtle like Aly & Fila’s My Mind Is With You (possibly referring to being a long distance away from someone who you love) and One day (Sied van Riel Remix) by Alex Armes, where the flights of fancy are deep set into the rhythm and tune itself.
Sied van Riel is the man who was named ‘the hottest producer around’ by Tiësto in 2008, and ‘the next big thing to hit trance’ by DJ Magazine, so he is well equipped for the job of mixing half of this massive compilation. Hailing from The Netherlands, he has already picked up several huge awards such as Trance Awards ‘Best New Face’. It only took him 12 months after his initial 2008 fly in to firmly qualify as a maestro of trance, playing over 60 incredible sets in one year, and fitting in spinning at 7 world class events in 9 days. So we can certainly say that Van Riel has been a busy boy, extending his legacy further by coinciding the release of ‘Airport’ with a huge Australasian tour. You may be thinking that this dude is a bit of a newbie, springing up barely two years ago, but let me give you a short history lesson – the trance genre wasn’t even properly named until the 1990’s, a combination of several other electronic genres such as industrial, techno and house, and is characterised by a beat that ranges between 130 and 155 BPM. Ok, lesson over, take your pen out of your mouth and stop daydreaming out the window because the fun stuff is returning.
Then comes the second CD… obviously… and this one is mixed by the flying Melbournian, Trent McDermott. MickeyD has definitely already flown into our hearts with his previous hits such as Let There Be Light, the Rank 1 classic that he co-remixed with tyDi. It may be easy to get a big head being known as ‘Melbourne’s number 1 trance export’, and being number 13 in Sony’s Inthemix top 50 DJ Poll, but McDermott still keeps his infamous underground integrity. He has been the support act to some of the biggest names in the world such as Tiësto, Paul van Dyk and Above & Beyond, just to name a few. This DJ, like many other talented musicians, is also big on the production front, and has a hot new collaboration with Binary Finary on this very CD called Freedom Seekers (Trent McDermott Mix).
McDermott’s choices on his mixed CD are, well, choice! He brings on board his friends Tiësto, Marco V, Yuri Kane, Chris Reese, Weekend Heroes, DJ Eco and Scot Mac, among others, to create a pumping trance CD packed to overflowing point with the essentials of fast but light beats, and melodic, consciousness-altering tunes that will induce a trance-like state on any dancefloor. Killer tracks: Tigran Oganezov Hurricane (Maarten De Jong Remix), and of course Tiësto, Love Comes Again (Bart Claessen Remix) and Binary Finary and Trent McDermott’s newie. Funnily enough, considering Van Riel’s Northern European heritage, and McDermott’s Southern Australian heritage, McDermott is choosing a lot of songs and remixes by people of Northern European descent, such as Firtich, Claessen, Maarten, Oganezov and Saenz. So perhaps their styles are not as far from each other as their countries!
All in all, a great album to take off to. An album collaborated by talented artists from all over the globe, coming together in one place. An album to listen to, no matter where you are, or where you’ve been in your life’s travels. I think I’ve finally figured out why it’s called ‘Airport’, airports are places that you take flight from, places where you say goodbye to an old life, places where you dream about holidays, places where you see loved ones that you haven’t seen for a long time. For some people they are places of hope, for others they are places where you freak out and worry that you are about to die in a sardine can in the air. But for all, they are places of heightened emotion, and this album encapsulates that.
- Alinta Krauth
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