Symphonix - The Usual Suspects

[Trance2MoveU]

 

Artist: Symphonix

Title: The Usual Suspects

Label: Blue Tunes Recordings

Date: October, 2010

 

 

1. Remember You

2. Sexy Dance

3. Downtown

4. Strawberry Lime

5. Music from heaven (Symphonix rmx)

6. True Reality

7. Dawn to dusk

8. Dirty Minds

9. Ask for permission

10. Feel Free

 

 

Look at that cover. Aspirin, cigarettes, goofy sunglasses...what is that a condom wrapper and a clunky iPod? Get a job you worthless parasite! Quit living off of mommy and daddy's money and be a productive member of society. Obviously these guys travel to exotic locations playing festivals and carry only the essentials. Dicks. Symphonix are brothers Sirko and Stephan Woetanowski and according to the woefully boring promo text at Psyshop they are keeping it progressive. This is their 3rd studio album and besides that they have been on more compilations than I can count. Blue Tunes Recordings is...jesus will you look at all the stuff they put out? They're a bunch of prolific motherf*ckers. I own a lot of it and I will tell you they are a quality progressive factory. But enough about that, let's see if this lives up to the bullsh*t hype.

 

Remember You- This has a fat kick and a nice bass line. It's a scaled back approach, different than what I am used to. Not a lot of variation here. Throw me some effects, man! It's kind of boring until about 3:45 when there is a slight key change that wakes me up. Groovy, but I would say this was a slow start.

 

Sexy Dance- Oh f*ck...really. Do I wanna dance? Kick, stab, shuffling, and one note bass line...C'mon guys you're going to have to do better than that. 3 minutes and I'm ZZZZZzzzzz.... Oh but it gets worse because the ladies voice is speaking over the weak track and she is on the cheese train. Woo Woo. This is quickly spiraling out of control. Seriously she says, "Uh...I like that." F*cking sad.

 

Downtown- I have to give it to them, they bring a pillowy soft kick. There are more stabs and yep, the one note bass line. Good God this is boring. It's so minimal and repetitive that my mind wanders. Kick, bass line, stabs...Someone send these guys a melody chart.

 

Strawberry Lime- Soft strings float by as the kick enters. This has a few more components but the one note bass and stabs are still there, don't worry. More rotating strings and bouncy percussion. Getting there...

 

Music from heaven (Symphonix rmx)- With a slow start we jump right into...a one note bass line and a kick. In a live show do you just press a button and go get a drink? Yeah it's groovy, but what else? Tedious samples repeated....I'm starting to lose it...And this is a remix! Isn't a remix supposed to improve how a track sounds?

 

True Reality- The kick and one line bass note stopped being effective 5 tracks ago...Add cornball lyrics and this is almost too much to take.

 

Dawn to dusk- It's the same f*cking track and we are almost 3 minutes in. The break is slightly interesting, but I feel there isn't much left to see here.

 

Dirty Minds- I didn't think it was possible for a track to make me feel like I am a pervert.

 

Ask for permission- Kind of eerie, but it still suffers from the same malaise the rest of the album has succumbed to.

 

Feel Free- You don't know how close I was to ending this review after track 5. This may have been the greatest track ever, but I'll never know because I wasn't paying attention. Nah, I was, but I didn't hear anything different from the previous 9.

 

 

God that was excruciating. This is the definition of a one trick pony. I guess they have that minimal progressive style, but it drives me insane. So boring and empty with no track evolution. With track names that have everything to do with late night clubbing you would think there would be some energy here. It's the same formula time and time again. This is like just playing the presets on the synth and letting the sequencer go. I hate to speak ill of someones work because they must have worked hard in between the beer and weed, but this lacks any emotion or passion. It is substantially closer to house music than progressive especially when the samples ask me questions. If you want to hear quality progressive trance stay away from this and listen to what Iono music cooks up. I'm leaving links to samples because this is just my opinion...you can make up your own mind. But I would take away their instruments if I could.

 

 

Psyshop

 

Beatspace

 

Goa Store

 

Mdk

[abysis212]

Your Review had me cracking up. "Obviously these guys travel to exotic locations playing festivals and carry only the essentials. Dicks." Love it. The rest of the review was quite funny as well. Especially as we got deeper into the CD. Yea, I haven't heard this one. Probably not going to bother. Everything I have heard from Symphonix has this promise like 'oh this might be good' but then it never manages to hold my attention and I get bored and listen to something else. I keep waiting for these guys to learn how to make music...they have been doing it for awhile...you think they would have got it by now. Reminds me of Vaishyas. Oh, well.