Scorb : Ipso Fvcto

[Melancholyman]

Artist: Scorb

Release Title: Ipso Fvcto

Label: Trick Music

 

 

Tracklisting:

1. Pareidolia

2. Sol Invictus

3. Yodyssey

4. Rave From The Grave

5. Apohenia

6. Wobbly Matter

7. P2P

8. Pyrotechno

9. Tower Of Klorox

10. Angleterror

11. Ipso Fvcto

12. Aquiescence

13. Supraliminal

 

Review:

 

There you are, sitting comfortably looking back at the year’s releases and thinking you’ve pretty much got a handle on the year in review.

Then, quite without warning, the world throws you a golden apple in the shape of this staggeringly good album.

 

 

Little is known of Scorb. His eponymous 2003 debut still stands up today and is one I would urge you to check out if you haven’t already (assuming you can find it, that is.)

After a steady trickle of decent releases on compilations, Ipso Fvcto is the artist album with which he makes his name on electronic music.

 

 

It’s good. Very good. Imagine receiving oral when the phone rings. You answer the phone and it’s the tax office, who due to an administrative error owe you several million quid.

And all of this happening while England win the World Cup. (Residents of any country other than Portugal may feel free to substitute "England" with their own country in the last sentence.)

Ipso Fvcto is better than all that.

 

 

You will be bowled over by this. Sol Invictus is hands down one of the most beautiful tracks of the year; moody yet fluid, the production is pixel-perfect and boils down to the sort

of sound that anyone with an interest in electronic music is going to appreciate. Yes, there are melodies, and they are wonderful – but to focus on that aspect detracts from the complexity

of what’s going on here. Sol Invictus is one of those very special tracks that, by the last run, has you feeling like you’re dancing about three feet off the ground; think Hallucinogen’s Shamanix,

except at a more pleasant BPM.

 

 

And from here, things just get better. Yodyssey has one foot on Timecode/Artifakt land, but keeps its foot off the accelerator just how you want it to. By the time the soaring,

cascading 303 takes centre stage, you’re utterly gagging for more… This is how music should be folks. Every now and then I make reference to how artists should learn to

ease back a bit and let the music speak for itself, instead of have them pushing it along to where they want to go. This is what I was getting at all this time.

 

 

Rave From The Grave is in that shuffled, quantized 4/3 or whatever the hell it is. You know what I mean. Just when we thought we’d had enough of tracks like this,

Scorb creates a sort of anti-anthem, the bizarre Gamma Goblins. Tasty, with more changes than a Kylie stage show. Meanwhile Wobbly Matter is frenetic, pacey doof with depth.

 

 

Next up is something I’ve always wanted to hear more of: psy producers turning their hand to drum n’ bass. P2P is, as they probably say in jungle clubs, fucking awesome.

It reminds me of Wormhole-era Optical: pure digital stuff that creates a shifting, ever-changing organic groove. Once again you’re free to marvel at the depth and characterisation

that Scorb gives to his music, or you can just dance about and gradually lose track of where you put your drink.

 

 

Pyrotechno is a succulent cut of dark psychedelia with a dazzlingly hypnotic midsection. You’re sucked right into this one until you’re rendered completely powerless by this huge,

canopy-like midrange line that whips you up in the air before an array of squishy gives you something to really dance home about. Tower Of Klorox is a less-imaginative variation on the same theme.

 

 

I mean… Shit. Am I managing to communicate anything to you? Just listening, for the tenth time, to the way the intro to Angleterror rubs in from out of nowhere.

This is fucking genius, and yes I’m well aware of how over-used and misappropriated that word usually is. It really is streets ahead of everything else out there.

We’re listening to evolution happening right before our ears, and fuck me does evolution sound good.

 

 

I know this is a new paragraph, but I’m still talking about the same track. Angleterror. I want to have its babies so much that I’ve opened up a fake Facebook

in the name of one of its former schoolfriends to see if I can stalk it effectively enough to work out where it lives. Then I’m going to move into the flat next door and

drill holes from bathroom to bathroom so I can perv on it with foaming cock in hand, until my cover gets blown by researchers working on a BBC documentary about

the privacy concerns opened up by social networking sites such as Facebook.

 

 

Are you still there? It really doesn’t matter. My life has been enriched so much by this CD that I’ve realised I don’t need you cynical bastards anymore.

I’m never going to another party again. Never writing another review again. Never doing anything again.

 

 

Hang on though, scratch all that, the next track’s decent too. Breaksy. It’s the title track, Ipso Fvcto. Now Scorb decides to take on that whole psy/breaks crossover…

and roger me backwards with all music that has ever preceded this release, he’s done it bloody well. Cliché free, organic, individual, and sounding like it’s come down from space.

 

 

Is Afrika Bambaata still alive, does anyone know? He really should hear this record. Ipso Fvcto pisses all over Pet Sounds, pisses all over Blonde On Blonde,

and pisses and shits over anything Kraftwerk ever did. It’s also so much better than anything Miles Davis or John Coltrane ever did that I’ve amended their respective Wikipedia pages accordingly.

 

 

The album is still going, and it’s still good. Bear in mind that by this stage we’d normally expect to run out of things to say, but there’s still so much going on.

The slomo funktardation of Aquiscence is so glorious it makes me draft wildly sweeping statements of superlativity such as “this record spins at thirty-three Copernican revolutions per minute.”

 

 

Even the last track Supraliminal, that ambient/beatless one at the end usually reserved for sample-disc-laden boring tracks with vocals by some bird the artist was trying to shag, is interesting.

It ends in a way that makes the album's intro track Pareidolia sound even more appealing – which is just as well, because as soon as you’ve played this through, you’re going to want to listen to it all over again.

 

 

I feel as though the last seven years of my reviewing music has all been preparation for this. It may be The Last Great Psychedelic Trance Album.

The universe is probably going to fold in on itself and we’re all going to die, but who cares.

 

 

The fact that there exists somebody on this planet who is capable of making such wonderful, varied, warm, personal, intimate, and kickin’ music reaffirms my faith in Everything.

If all artists would spend as much time, energy and attention when making music, the world would be a better place.

 

 

If you are a producer, listen to this. Realise you are not and can never be this good. Then give up writing music.

 

 

If you are a collector, listen to this. Realise that this is the album you’ve been waiting for since Chi-AD disappeared. Then throw out your old Chi-AD records.

 

 

I really don’t know what else to say, except that this really is as good as I’m claiming it is. Well, possibly barring the statements about Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys.

 

 

To cut through all the shite I’ve spurted above, Ipso Fvcto is a drippingly good album. The depth, the movement, the escalation, and the sheer balls-out skill behind it all make it one of the only albums I can honestly look you in the eye and describe as Essential.

[Melancholyman]

Been listening to samples and it sounds indeed very promising.

[amphiton]

Read this review yesterday, checked the samples and realized how different our tastes are sometimes. Will have to check "longer" samples, but it's nothing special now.

[Insejn]

Are you sure he wants his review here? Have you asked for permission? Prolly not a big deal but... I dunno

[Snapinho]

That's one succulent review, but well, it's Damion so whaddayaxpect. I loved Scorb first album to death, one of my alltime favorites. Gonna check this out as soon as it's available someplace.

 

And yeah, I'm not sure you should copypaste his review here... if he wanted to, he would've done it himself. But well, I don't get his emails anymore, so at least I'll keep up to date this way. Cool beans.

[Melancholyman]

Are you sure he wants his review here? Have you asked for permission? Prolly not a big deal but... I dunno

 

And yeah, I'm not sure you should copypaste his review here... if he wanted to, he would've done it himself. But well, I don't get his emails anymore, so at least I'll keep up to date this way. Cool beans.

Didn't think of it that way, I won't do it again. If I will, I'll send an email to him for his approval first

[moni]

True, the most correct thing would be to ask for permission first. I will discuss this with the other mods, before drawing a conclusion.

 

Everyone else, please try to stay on topic for the rest of this topic. Thank you.

[Snapinho]

Ontopic: nice artwork too!

[Lauryn]

.

[abasio]

I must say I'm quite surprised to read this review. I really liked scorb's first album, but upon listening to the samples online, found them incredibly bland and compared with his earlier tracks, not psychedelic at all.

Therefore you probably wont buy it. I never ever listen to samples anymore. Music always sounds bland and uninspired in a sample. Especially really good, deep music. The number of albums I wouldn't have bought if I heard the samples but love so much is high indeed.

I'll wait until I have the CD in my hands before commenting on the music as I just can't tell from samples

[Lauryn]

.

[moni]

Please don't review samples. I'm afraid I will have to moderate this topic. Too much talk about samples, which is not fair.

[Basilisk]

Move it to general. This is more of a discussion than a review.

[Lauryn]

Move it to general. This is more of a discussion than a review.

Agreed. the review wasn't even posted by the person who wrote it.

My comments about the samples were my gut reactions to what i had heard at the time [f.y.i. saiko sounds give you 4 minutes (about half the track) to hear] Regardless, as per the discretion of the mods, i deleted my posts above.

[TRICK]

Agreed. the review wasn't even posted by the person who wrote it.

My comments about the samples were my gut reactions to what i had heard at the time [f.y.i. saiko sounds give you 4 minutes (about half the track) to hear] Regardless, as per the discretion of the mods, i deleted my posts above.

Hi Lauryn - for longer, better quality clips of all the tracks go to our homepage

www.trickmusic.com

[StraydoG]

I gave this album a listen through last night... Its sweet!

 

One of my top albums this year for sure. The Breaks/DnB tracks are just to mean!

[Super Ae]

Giving this album the first listen through right now. Definitely one of my favorite releases this year. Very psychedelic!

[buzzman]

Listening to the album for my first time right now, and i must say... Wonderful psychedelic stuff

[Insejn]

It's good. But it's not that good psyreviews will make you think it is. The production is insanely good but it lacks some melodies I think. Too often there is just clever sounds thrown in - in an extremley well thought pattern I might add. But it's not enough for me. And it's one of those albums that sounds much better if you play it really LOUD. I would love to hear him live. Still, it's one of the better releases this year.

[psydmt]

2 really good tracks-(track 2 and 3 I think) then the rest degrades into thumping technoish noise a lot like RAM.......

[Riton]

2 really good tracks-(track 2 and 3 I think) then the rest degrades into thumping technoish noise a lot like RAM.......

omg i thought i was the only one :s

[Trance2MoveU]

While I won't echo the latter opinion, I also won't say this is the end all and be all of Psytrance. We all know that title belongs to the Freaked Frequency CD! :posford: I listened to this this morning and I can appreciate what Ady has done. In this time of 4/4, recycled sounds and repetitive unimaginary psy that sounds the same after track one, we have a release here that switched it up. In the same release you have drum & bass, psy, some ambient and downtempo, along with some techno. I don't think he is the master of all those styles, but I do believe he is quite good at it. So the question is whether you would like an artist that is the best at one style and that is all he or she does, or an artist that is quite competent at a lot of styles thereby giving a varied experience?

 

I know which one I like.

 

Mdk

[fohat]

in keeping away the breaks stuff (i don't like this style) this album is imo indeed kind of a master piece and close to perfection. nothing more to add.

[Time_Trap]

Very nice album, combining various styles, from (quality) full-on-ish psy to darker psychedelic trance and some breaks...

8+/10

[Sawfly]

Yeah, nice album, but nothing more. I was secretly hoping for something more but let's face it, not a perfect album.

 

7/10