Abracadabra (by Alex Tolstey)

Damn. I shouldn't have made that bet. My usual policy on these matters is to only bet on what's a sure win. It all started out with talking about fish with Dave. Don't get me wrong. Dave is a stand-up guy, but he can be an total stinker at times, and talking about fish, anyone should have guessed it's up his own alley. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You see, I like techno, dig techtrance, and love seafood, all nearly as much as George. And when Dave put on Abracadabra, a compilation by Horns and Hoofs compiled by Alex Tolstey (one of my favorite DJs), I thought to myself, there's no way to lose.

We had just come back from a seafood restaurant, took out a bottle of Ouzo, and started up the Gamecube. Dave and yours truely like playing videogames. Soul Calibur 2 is a favorite, we just go smash eachother to bits with swords, staffs, axes and whatever. I started out kicking his ass, like I usually do when I'm in the right mood, and for the first bit, it was good one-sided fun. Unfortunately, among other things which perfectionism is a fault of mine, drinking is too, once things get into a good swing. Soon enough, the tables were turned. Half a bottle does that to hand-eye coordination. And I felt my stomach even more upset than usual. Still recovering from that restaurant. I pured the ouzo over dave's newly stitched shoulder.

The drive to Dave's place before the frenzied game was one loud and annoying mishmash of harsh traffic, repairs on the road, a flat tire, and basically every nerve-wracking thing that can happen to two people in the car short of a guy thrown from a building through the windshield. At least, up to the point when two people actually were thrown through the windshield, making a (quite literal) bloody mess out of the car, and got a few shards of glass into my mate's shoulder. We gave some single-word retorts to the world with it's macabre sense of irony. We called the cops, tow-service, and spent a good couple of hours thanking whatever deity exists about the cops not giving us the breath test before we whipped up a pint of scotch and started drinking heavily.

Earlier that night, the specialty of a particular place was exotic types of sea creatures. Usually that's very nice, because just about everything you take out the sea is great food. A talent Dave has is finding all the hot places out before they become packed with rich kids, posers, and whatever asshole crowd that usually ruins every decent place, so he grabbed me to that place at it's most off of off-hours, and we sat at a table. We ordered a house special, which is a mixed bag of everything on the menu, being a massive dish meant for 4 people. We ordered a bottle of wine, since you can't eat decent amounts without alcohol smoothing the ride. Two guys praising Metalogic and Fuzzion just left for some sightseeing on top of a skyscraper with a famous view of the city. Asshole tourists. At least the food got there, and in no time we were munching on all kinds of bizzare seaslugs and rare umm... things.

George is Dave's friend. He freaks me out too much. A total loony, with a history of being in and out of institutions for the mentally insane which release him more because he scares the shit out of everyone there and they just can't wait to get rid of him... at least, that's my theory. Likes to hang out on rooftops because "the smell of the city is just terrible down there". He came in storming, throwing this CD on the sofa, muttering about killing those bastards that ruined a perfectly decent compilation with their lackluster efforts or plain lack of common sense - their dad should have beat them with a bigger belt, with a sharper buckle, that kind of gibberish. Then he ran out, slamming the door as abruptly as he came in.

You may have guessed it, I said that any fish cooked by a decent chef with the right materials has got to be good. I was only half-right. Sometimes a few bad parts of a huge dish can turn an overall good but into something that truely doesn't stand out. Half the tracks on this album are plain delicious, great, and rocking dancefloor fun. Midimiliz, as usual, do the techtrance thing just right and give a great smasher, Mantik and The Rockitmen give us a couple of solid dancefloor tracks, Mass Turbo's finishing track is a great one, slow and groovy, with just the right touches of psychedelia to make this track stand out... But Kino Oko just gives one of the best tracks I've heard in the past year, if only for this track, this album is worth it - and no, it's not really techtrance despite the techno influence, but it's a gem. About the rest... You know how fish can be. The other half of the tracks have a different characteristic they share with fish. And it's not taste.

Recomendation:  A solid 7.5-8/10 for the techtrancer, because the techtrance crowd tends to be a very discriminating one and this just doesn't stand up to the standard of the scene (aka Boshke Beats), 6.5/10 if you aren't all that much into techtrance, because this compilation is still well above the average quality for a release in the psytrance scene no matter what subgenre you like, unless you're into Suomi or Dark, and then you may actually find this a bad release, but unless you're a diehard of one of those subgenres, it's still a 5/10. Well above the average release of the scene, but if you'd look at only half the tracks here, this album could either be an awesome dark and groovy classic or a sub-par bit of unimaginative tracks.

Personal Favorites: 1, 5(!), 8, 9(!!), 10(!)