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Sensifeel

Vision Of Life

Domo (Germany)

Philippe Sancier is 26, lives in France, and makes pretty good progressive music, suitable for both the outdoor morning sets and indoor dancefloors. A Breath starts out nice and easy, and layers sounds in a very relaxed and laconic way. It’s not rushing to accomplish anything and, in contrast with people like Freq, the sounds themselves are happy to drift in and out, rather than gather to form a coherent motion within the music. Extremely Good makes you wait for the action to kick in, which happens at about two and a half minutes. Detroit-y stabs gather around a central hook which suggests melodies, but at the end of the day is all about a steady groove. Freq steps up to remix Back To The Future, and the result is a well-balanced if tricky choon – you’re not quite sure which way it’s going, and it sort of lets you down before it gets anywhere. Dirty Beach has a great sound to it, you can tell from the very first layers that it’s going to be a good’un. It’s spacious, it’s breezy, and the groove it’s got will control the dancefloor’s attention nicely, and the final run where it all comes together is particularly impressive. Dance For Peace picks up the BPMs, and loses the grace – it’s difficult to handle, this one, and I’m not sure why – maybe too many sounds around the same frequency, but let’s not get technical. He gets the groove back with Who’s Going, which I can see really working both on indoor and outdoor dancefloors. It has a certain magnetic quality to it, which some of the other tunes on here allude to, but don’t quite reach. Sensifeel seems to be at his best letting the sounds do what they want to, and not forcing them. Open Air is another case in point, that’s so effortlessly effective as to make you seriously want to get up and have another beer (and so what if it’s 8:30am and you’ve only just arrived in the office). Likewise Explorer (Rmx), which coasts along blissfully with enough techno sensibilities to get your spotty mate who’s obsessed with Carl Craig going, “what was this again?” There’s some great tracks on here, but at the end of the day you’re left reminding yourself a progressive artist album is a tricky thing to get to grips with. At his best, Sensifeel creates fluid progressive tunes and he does this with unquestionable style; bit over the course of a full album, it’s pretty hard going.

6