Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not for the faint-hearted..., 16 Oct 2002
By A Customer
Following on from mix albums like Soulwax's Too Many DJs, multiple tracks mashed over each other to create strange new mixtures, comes DJ/Rupture's Minesweeper Suite. Except this DJ appears to have taken the mix album and given it a severe thrashing with a tyre iron. Foxy Brown, Dead Prez and Killing Me Softly provide some sort of link to the mainstream; selections from Middle Eastern and African artists provide a fantastic eclecticism, and the whole mix is then doused with tearing breakbeats and thrown off a cliff, by the sound of it.
I love it; I've never heard anything quite like it, but it only gets three stars because its sheer intensity may put some people off. If you think the concept of the mix album needs a good kick up the sub-woofer, you've come to the right place. Very nearly genius.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
70 Minutes of Saneness, 30 Jul 2006
Most DJs talk of taking their listeners on a journey. DJ /rupture seems to prefer telling his listeners a story. For where a 'journey' has connotations of playing "Count The Traffic Cones" on a long drive up the M25, a story has peaks and troughs, characters, suspense, plot twists: all of which are present in "Minesweeper Suite". That, and a huge cast - hip-hop, ragga, bashment, jungle, breakcore, techno, r&b and ambient artists all play a part along with patrons from the world of noise and visitors from Africa and India. Sounds like an epic tale? Read on.
What's impressive about this mix is just how rough /rupture allows it to be. Coldcut's mid-nineties opus "70 Minutes Of Madness" - previously the foremost authority on the 'eclectic' mix CD - was an impressive set, and still is, but there's always been a kind of pristine cleanliness to it: records blending neatly into each other without causing too much offense or calling attention to themselves (bar the Dr. Who theme of course). None of that with "Minesweeper Suite". /rupture possesses a John Peel-esque taste for edginess and eclecticism, personified here in an ensemble of genres that really shouldn't make sense but somehow does.
Holding it all together is an attitude to mixing that would make most 'esteemed' DJs cringe. Records change speeds within a moment's notice; turntables are turned off; tunes appear from and disappear into nowhere; vocal tracks are frequently engulfed by hailstorms of drum 'n' bass breaks or growling bass synths. But the sheer nerve of /rupture to employ such devices is what makes it work - he's certainly not afraid of rough edges. How else could you go from crippling electro breaks to Nina Simone's "Plain Gold Ring", or from an apocalyptic breakcore assault to Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly", whilst still maintaining an integrity as an artist? Don't ask me.
With three decks and very little (from what I can tell) studio editing involved, DJ /rupture's created a mix that only human hands (or a severely malfunctioning jukebox) could've made, yet up until now never bothered to. Here's hoping that other DJs learn a thing or two from "Minesweeper Suite". /rupture knows his records - you should too.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mindblowing Beatmixes, 20 Nov 2003
Until I read other reviews of this album (after hearing it), I didn't consider it a 'mix album' - It's a bit more complex than that... African drums, Arabic vocals, Dancehall, R&B, Hip-Hop both hard and soulful, most of it set to breakbeats that achieve an Aphex Twin/Squarepusher level of Intensity.
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~ DJ /rupture
~ Q-Tip
~ Deerhunter
~ Animal Collective
~ Keith Fullerton Whitman
See all 24 tracks on this disc
