DEATH IN VEGAS - DEAD ELVIS
Dirt was the first single from Dead Elvis, and it blew my mind. Samples from Woodstock, looped guitar chords, vocals sped-up so much as to be unintelligable... in short all of the ingredients for some kick-ass old school techno. "Please," I said to myself, "please let the rest of the album be HALF this good and I'll buy it." Well, good news and bad news; the rest of the album turned out to be half as good as Dirt. Unfortunately Dirt is the only song of its type on Dead Elvis, the rest being either heavily reggae-influenced or chillout room material. Now that's not to say the rest of the album sucks, far from it. It's just that - while All That Glitters is a great little blues laced number - I just wasn't expecting it from the same guy who created Dirt. DJ Richard Fearless is his name, by the way. Ranking Roger does a bang-up job with his vocals on Twist and Crawl, which is a darn good tune, and Fearless is truly a skilled DJ as is evidenced on tracks like the more laid-back Rocco and Rekkit. He also recruited several musicians to play guitar (Anthony Anderson), bass (Matt Flint and Nick 'Avin It) and saxaphone (Andy Visser) among others, giving the album a more organic feel to it than a lot of other strictly techno music. I Spy has a nice Far Eastish vibe to it, and Sly is very unique in and of itself with a rolling sort of bass effect, but I can't listen to any of the songs here without wondering what an entire album composed of the "love-your-brother-and-play-crunching-guitar-loops- against-a-heavy-breakbeat" vibe would have sounded like. Album of the Year, probably. Ah well. Check this out anyway, it's still good stuff.
Review by Aram at: Frames Per Second
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