Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dub is the Warmest Place to hide, 6 Sep 2007
Having chanced on Deepchord by accident, I realise this is the the music I have been looking for, for some time! Deep & dubby chilled grooves, crackle with the ghost of vinyl and the just beating heart of Detroit techno as it was at the beginning, namechecking William Gibson, looking to the future and not looking for the $$$$$ You can understand why artist such as Rod Modell are still championing this sound, when the results are so mindblowing. Not since the hayday of Ambient Dub in the early to mid 90's have I had the chance to sit thru 80mins of blissed out ambience as gentle dubbing grooves caress and carry you on a journey thru the ancient vintage circuitry and analog heaven before arriving at the standout track "Empyrean" the closest this album comes to a dancefloor. The Perfect antidote to todays migraine inducing glitch obsessed techno. This is Dub techno bass exploration and an aural massage for the mind.
Highly recommended indeed!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
numbed from the cold?, 17 Jul 2008
"Self-indulgent minimal dub-techno" may seem to be a contradiction in terms, after all - the whole point of minimal is economy. It's therefore a little strange that "The Coldest Season" comes across as a little over the top, the techno equivalent of a Yes or early-Genesis album. All the hall-marks of the genre (at least in it's European form) are here, the clicks and chirrups, the fog of bass, the surge of filter hiss - in fact Rob Modell takes the reductionism to another level entirely - much of this cd is completely beatless - a blizzard of white noise, rising and falling in a grimly hypnotic tide. So why does it feel a little spotty, a little anoraks-at-dawn, a little dungeons and dragons?
Modell has produced some true works of genius (his remix of Claude Von Stroke's 'Who's Afraid of Detroit' is a stomping funky brontosaur of a record), but there's a definite lack of subtlety here.
Dub in it's purest form is simply bass and drums - all the expression lies in the nuances of production - it's architecture as music. There's very little sense of a true dub dynamic on "The Coldest Season" - true, there's a lot of ominous bass, but it there's very little variation, or a sense of space. Instead virtually every channel seems to be crammed with glitchy noise. Equally, where say, Rhythm & Sound (See Mi Yah)always anchor their productions to Dubs' Reggae roots, "The Coldest Season" is clearly supposed to evoke some sort of science-fiction lunar landscape: bleak, cold, numb, emotionless.
OK - there's still lots to enjoy here - especially if you lean towards the icier side of ambient (e.g.Selected Ambient Works Vol.2), or the glitchier side of dub-techno (e.g. Pole Pole Vol.2). If you're coming to this from a reggae or dub angle, you're probably better off with Rhythm & Sound - or a classic early Tubbys or Scientist production...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Icily mellow, 3 Feb 2008
I bought this after reading several rave reviews and was not disappointed. However, it's not for all tastes, esp. if you're looking for beats: it fizzles, crackles and pops, with a throbbing bass undertow, but never fully surrenders to the dancefloor. It's defiantly minimal techno that will either entrance and envelop or bore you.
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