Average user rating    (0 vote)

As I keep saying lately, the digital EP is becoming the field-leader in the format wars -- or perhaps more accurately, it will when we let it. The Control Zeds EP is one of the most cohesive and varied digi-EP's I've come across, presenting itself more like a mini-album than a three-track single. 

The Control Zeds is one half of Voice of Cod, and I'm particularly pleased that a solo act has chosen a name that ends in a plural. I can't stand it when people on the internet get things wrong and make huge grammatical and musical mistakes such as "Hallucinogen, yeah they're really good" or "Ticon is great." These online grammar and muso dunces are going to go into seizures on this one.

The music, then. Release The Hounds starts off slowly with a  solid rhythm section and neat micro-noises keeping things shifting. It gradually draws elements together to form a simple melodic hook that's well-manipulated and sits nicely, almost as though it's suspended from the top of the music. The melody subsides and we're ito what I'd officially call "the interesting bit" before the melody comes back in, somehow sounding like you're recalling it in the taxi on the way home.

What's Wrong With Lemurians is, for my money, the cracker on offer here. There has been a sort-of conception that if you want decent fullon in 2009, you follow Dickster around and pick  up and play whatever falls off him. I'm pretty sure you can now revise that mantra and start to include The Control Zeds in the list of trance producers you stalk. It is neat, ballsy, fluid and varied. 

Something Else, a collaboration with Tron, is more interesting on a musical level, but less engaging on a dancefloor level. There's a lot going on, but it doesn't have that engaging, magnetic hook of the other offerings here until too late in the track. The last three minutes are sublime -- I just wish it didn't takeso long to get there. This is probably a meaningless statement in the age of Ableton re-edits and whatnot, but meaningless statements are what I do, and you can't take that away from me (no you can't take that away from me.)

Anyway -- good stuff. It's reassuring and somehwat inspiring to come across a debut as polished and confident as this -- top marks to all involved.