Coolio is a CD single meant to be a teaser before the release of Astrix' full length album - Artcore. It features one track off the album (Techno Widows) and three previously unreleased tracks.
The first one is Coolio which shows the progress Astrix has done since his last album, more than two years ago. His sound is top notch and track structure is more intelligent than just melody-breakdown-buildup-melody. Next comes the Infected Mushroom remix. First of all I have to say that this remix surprised me a bit. I don't like the work of Infected Mushroom at all in the past few years. In my opinion, they lost every connection to psychedelic trance and began making club music, although good club music. This remix has some signs of psychedelia in it, which is good. As a remix, it has a lot more power than the original track and could wake up every sleepy dance floor. The only problem with it, is that it doesn't sound like a remix from another artist. It sounds just like another version to the original track, since Astrix’ and Infected Mushroom’s sound became so similar lately.
The third track is Techno Widows - also featured on his new album. This one's another amazing sounding Astrix track but this time it was mixed by Ido Ophir (Domestic) and Ohad Aharoni (Sub6) so I must say they did quite a job here. One thing stopped it from being a perfect track - the overused guitars. I heard it used just like that on far too many tracks.
The final track here is a GMS remix to Eye to Eye (previously released on the album carrying the same name). GMS has been a favorite for bashing in the past years, and it probably made them realize they need to work on making good music again. It had actually happened and their latest tracks on compilations are quite good. Unfortunately, this is not the case here. Nothing special here. A typical GMS baseline and some GMSish sounds, but nothing more. They have better music. |
