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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good stand-alone mix. but poor when compared to Vol.'s 1&2, 6 Jul 2002
I have had the first two volumes of the Northern Exposure series for quite some time now - Northern Exposure is simply the best mixed compilation ever and nobody and nothing I shouldn't think will ever change my opinion of this; it is an epic, intelligent, moving journey through ambient breakbeat house right the way to (dare I say it) trance. Northern Exposure 2 is also superb, not quite up to the standard of the first installment but still a wholly original and memorable experience to listen to.For some reason I had never bothered getting 'Expeditions', I suppose this was probably due to the fact that it was on a different label from the first 2 albums (INCredible as opposed to Ministry Of Sound) but a few weeks ago I thought that with Sasha & John Digweed (The world's 2 finest DJ's in my opinion) behind the decks I would be in for some gourmet mixing. The first dissapointment came upon looking at the tracklisting - gone are the variety of tracks from all over the House/Techno/Trance spectrum and instead we get a slightly formulaic sprinkling of prog. trance with little deviation from this field. This is not to say that there are no magical moments on the compilation. The Light's 'Expand The Room' is awesome as is the ethereal trance of Sasha's Orbital inspired 'Belfunk'. Over on disc 2 trance-god Oliver Lieb's remix of Humate's 'Love Stimulatiom' does the business and Matt Dareys 'Tekara' Remix of Mike Koglin's Depech Mode - esqe 'The Silence' makes for a brilliant finish, but I feel there are a few weak track choices. Secondly (and this really gets me) we have the 'sing-by-numbers' trance vocals (cheesy vocals are what took trance from a respectable techno/house hybrid to throw-away europop) as exhibited on Delerium's 'Silence' (wisely excluded form the Ultra US release - McLachlan's vocals are comparable only to root canal surgery in my opinion) The shallow 'Lost Without You' by Jayn Hanna also fails to impress. It would be wrong to say that the previous two albums were wholly instrumental, rather any use of vocals was done in a subtle, intelligent way (I give you Morgan King's 'I Am Free' as a prime example). Lastly the mixing (whilst technically perfect as is to be expected) lacks the magic of previous albums. In the past you would be glancing at the CD player to see if one track had ended and another started, now you can count them right to the end. There is also a rather clumsy edit in Space Manoeuvres' 'Stage One' where a second mix of the track is simply cut into a breakdown of the first - a few seconds of mixing would have sounded better. I hope I have not put anyone off buying this. As a mix compilation it is good if not very good. It's just not good by Sasha & Digweed's standards and is not worthy of being a Northern Exposure album. Call it Communicate -1 or something.
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