Aural Rage, "Sinsemilla Dreams"

If early '90s sounding techno happens not to be your thing you’re unlikely to enjoy the majority of this release. Tagged as ‘remixes and reconstructions’ from Danny Hyde’s (Coil member and remixer) Aural Rage project, this harks heavily back to the last decade’s commercial electronic music. Some of this could very easily be passed off as having been taken from charting releases of that era, and this is sort of a backhanded compliment to Hyde.

Divine Frequency

Some of the sounds and styles on here sound like they really do belong back there. For example, the five tracks featuring Joanna De Seyne’s vocals are a little too thickly voiced, a little too techno diva and safe sounding for the world of 2006. Having never been fully seduced by Hyde’s Love’s Secret Domain Coil-era work, it’s understandable that a lot of this should be passing by me. Perhaps without the remixing efforts of DJ Poltergeist and MC Ramification (whom I’m starting to convince myself are only Hyde pseudonyms anyway), this might be a little more rough and edgy.

When it does slip away from the grips of the remixers (according to the credits), as on "Hippy Cult Leader (Intro)"or "I Don’t Need That Deviant Sex Thing (Calm Before the Porn Edit)", it seems that little bit more human. Inventive and restless without being too dense, they manage to carry that baggage of yesteryear without sounding like they were recorded in it. On the plus side there seems to be a lighter touch to Sinsemilla Dreams than there was on A Nature of Nonsense, this appearing less noticeably layered. These tracks seem to be more jagged, and in the case of the latter song is instilled with a motionless melancholy; the title becoming more of a realisation than a rehashed eighties punch line.

Those wondering how the remixed tracks with Jhonn Balance worked out this time ("FJ Nettlefold" is versioned here twice) may be interested to hear that while one take is harsher and the other is squelchier, neither are as good as the original. Hopefully Sinsemilla Dreams is just a brief remix project stopgap along the way to the next album.

samples:

• Argento Meets the Skinheads (Black Zodiac Mix)
• FJ Nettlefold (Radar Angels Mix)
• I Don‚Äôt Need That Deviant Sex Thing (Calm Before the Porn Edit)