Details
This folks hails from California, a place known not just for its liberal attitudes, quality herbs, sunshine but also for its open-minded mixed bag hotchpotch of different cultures and ways of life. Which is represented in this album. Mind Modem are Brian Saitzyk and Burning Man mashup veteran Jon Mark, and their style has it all - there are elements of house from both sides of the Atlantic, a bit of tribal, and a smooth dose of psychedelia creating a very individual and addictive musical blend. "Uprise" has held-back psychedelic runs and highly emotive melodies, chained together by a tribal house backbone that manages to create a laid back and pensive feel. "Overlap" is healthy dancefloor-mashing techno, and the busy morphing textures of "The Visionary" make for speaker-melting nighttime mayhem. "Eccentric" is a brooding and swirly tune, with filtered gated snarl-driven lines falling in and out of sonic reality. "Remember" sounds like it was straight from Burning Man and captures the chaos-frenzy degenerate vibe of a few thousand motorcycle nutters blazing about the place, and the rising, kundalini-like lead line is a delight as it boils up over the surface. "Semiotic" is a busy technoid roller with heavy snares and textured rubs aplenty, though its overly tech-bashes might make it a little too sweaty for most trance sets. Finally "Your Highness" brings the album to an end in epic style, a ten minutes-plus shakedown with a bubbling acidised bassline, a huge breakdown with cascading 303's to keep the purists happy, morphing into an extended acid rollercoaster for a delightfully extended final run.