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Various

Gran Turismo 4 Kicks

Solstice (Japan)

Being a slightly odd idea this one. Tracks “from and inspired by” everyone’s favourite petrolhead tweakery modificationy, staggering-impression-of-speed-but-the-cars-all-handle-the-same playstation friendless Japanese racing game Gran Turismo. The Antidote is up first with Bullet, a fairly standard Serge affair with bustling bottomend, squelchy acid, a nice break melody and the sort of escalation 3D Vision used to pump out a few years back. Some geezer called Hallucinogen pops up with Bubble’n Tweak, his first proper solo release since Mi-Loony-Um and a very tasty one at that… 130bpm and very psychedelic, it’s got a stretchy vibe to it not unlike much of his collaboration stuff (especially those on Unusual Suspects 2) and suggests that the old fella is mellowing a bit more these days. It comes alive wonderfully and is unmistakably Posford all the way through – one of the first pleasant surprises of the year. X-Dream’s Move And Proceed sounds a little to me like one of the rejected tracks from their last album, and it’s more in keeping with the Irritant sound. Caustic, busy, and with a sort of forced-glitch escalation. Can’t imagine it working well in a racing game, but on tecchier dancefloors the building riff is likely to busy quite a few kneecaps (in a good way). Etnica’s Checkered Flag takes bounce and sticks in some very generic snare patterns and (gasp) rolls while slapping acidlines over the top. Nothing wrong with it, but it sounds very hurried and almost unfinished. Quadra’s Back On Track is a pleasant surprise, more hectic and harder than most of his other output and while it strictly adhered to the rule of 32, the sounds are interesting and the way the lead lines morph in and out is pretty impressive. A nice slomo breakdown gives way to perhaps one high-end noise too many, and it’s all very stopstart, but both as game soundtrack and dancefloor fodder it’s likely to work pretty well. Koxbox make a welcome return with Inside Every Man (There’s A Machine Waiting To Come Out), opening with relaxed kaleidoscopic twirls that used to be their trademark. A couple of changes later, and some oldskool flurries come over the top of the bustling bottomend, before turning more percussive and suggesting a tad of the sinister. Nice. Eat Static’s Dreamsnatcher has a great sound, sort of trance-but-not-trance with echoes of their more recent funky, disco output combined with the rolling sub of their earlier work. It escalates perfectly nicely, and there’s plenty of variety in the sounds on offer. If only the same could be said of Alien Vs The Cat’s The Race, which is the most generic of the tunes on here. Sounding like “any old cobblers with some F1 car screeches bunged over the top”, the shades of these producers’ best output is more then overshadowed by the sheer boredom going on. Swiftly on then to the last track, Moon Over The Castle from Synthetic Vs The Antidote, which is the only one on here that sounds completely like game music, probably because it’s subtitled GT’s Main Theme. Music to select options to, or add new disc brakes to your car to, or to reset the console and play GTA instead. It’s an interesting piece of music, with a guitar line that sweeps around the speakers (5.1?) and sounds a little like it’s from some Japanese cartoon. About three minutes in, it gets faster and loses its breakbeat-noise groove, picks up and drops gloriously into a 4-4, after which it goes bleepy, goes ravey, then brings that lead guitar back for an ultimately perplexing, dare-anyone-play-this-out spoogefest. A thoroughly disappointing album, saved only by the new Hallucinogen track – the only reason I bought it, and probably the only reason you will too.

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