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In the movie Snatch, when the black guys from the pawn shop rock up to the bookie’s to rob it, the shorthaired chick behind the counter repeats a mantra in ultra-skanky cockney: “All… Bets… Are… Off.” This line was cranking around in my head for the entire duration of this album. All bets are indeed off, and this is the sound you have been looking for.

I have been banging on about to all and sundry in the week since it’s been part of my life. I have been staggered by it in the car, staggered by it on headphones in the supermarket and staggered by it while walking to catch public transport. I love it. It is living, breathing proof that there IS, after all, an alternative to shit psytrance. Trance CAN be psychedelic, it CAN be original and it CAN be good – so good, it reaffirms all sorts of things it shouldn’t. Okay, let’s step back.

Koxbox produced some of the finest moments in psytrance history. Their original CD’s change hands for silly money on ebay, and I thought we’d heard the last of them. Frank E is widely considered one of the best soundsystem engineers on the planet, and Koxbox are finally back with this, the best piece of psychedelic music released in years. It is telling that it’s coming out on Twisted; original Nuttah of the psychedelic trance scene, back with a bolt delivering us this slice of dancefloor bliss.

Four minutes into opening track Crazy you’ve been drilled into the floor, swung around the room by your genitals, then lifted up into a melodic run that sounds and feels like it could be from seven years ago. It’s a whirlwind, with a sound pitched somewhere above the earthy Doof Records sound but it happily miles and miles away from the post-Protoculture mess that infects the current scene like syphilis. The opening strains of Buffer Overdrive are immaculate: it sounds significant, it sounds intriguing, it sounds EXCITING – a word I’ve put in capitals because it singularly sums up what elevates this so far above the rest of the pack. There are twists, there are turns. There are elements of progressive, of dub, of oldskool psychedelia, of vintage techno. It’s not so much a new album as a rewrite.

No More Ghosts – a collaboration with Eat Static -  is an instant winner, with morphing textures, quirky glitchbits and more attitude than Snoop Dogg. It sounds at times like the stereo is coming alive, crunching into action. If I’m making it sound like it’s a clunky, thunky album then I’m only getting half the point across – so much of this is effortless, funky, smooth stuff and that clash of styles is what gives it its power. Next Stop, with Christof, opens up sounding more familiar to your standard psytrance ears, and then adds insane sounds and depth to create something that is – once again – genuinely exciting and thoroughly compelling stuff.

FM17 has a crazy introduction and then flirts with X-Dream, with an insane acid-ish line leading to a breakdown that is likely to really make you spin out, before culminating in an oldskool run that The Infinity Project would have been proud of. This Can’t Be Real is another winner, a complete ground-up reworking of the concept of psychedelic techno. The groove here is so sheer, so solid that it’s almost not true – this ought to be the hit out of all the assembled material here.

The final three tracks see Frank E get back with Ian Ion: Acid Drome sounds like you would expect it to from its title, Side Effects is a relentless bashing that sounds like the boys are beating the living breath out of the psytrance community (let’s face it, we’ve had it coming) and Voice Of brings the album to a close in a frenetic, buzzy style.

So what have we got? Well, at a risk of repeating myself ad infinitum, this is seriously – and I mean this – the most significant psytrance album of the year. While others use formula and similar sounds to – for better or worse – create new trance music, only Koxbox have gone that step further, using new sounds, new ideas, new voices and new personalities. It really is that good. In the light of this release, every other album I have ever reviewed and thought was a classic fades into distant obscurity.

To repeat, this is the sound you have been looking for. We have just progressed to the next level; about bloody time.

10

Preview and buy the best tracks - Crazy, Buffer Overdrive, No More Ghosts, and Acid Drome - in WAV format at the Psyreviews Download Shop