Tectonic: Cat. # TECCD006
Released October 2009

Track List:
1. Intro (1:28)
2. Flashback (4:40)
3. Lost (4:21)
4. Like A Dream (4:21)
5. Dinosaur (5:01)
6. Unbalance (7:21)
7. Superfight (7:41)
8. Yes/No (6:08)
9. Who Are You Fooling? (6:27)
10. Narita (5:08)
11. Love In Outer Space (4:57)
12. Escape Velocity (6:08)


IN BRIEF: More unimatrix, less urban.

Being such a young genre, dubstep hasn’t had much opportunity to splinter off into micro-genres. For much of its early years, it seemed to be a curiously fresh amalgamation of the UK grime scene and displaced drum’n’bass vibes. Now that all the dust has settled, however, it appears we now have two or three distinct branches from which many will firmly make their bed with. Party kids obviously enjoy the ‘wobble’ side of things, where gimmicky bass tricks abound. Elsewhere, the ‘funky’ variety has found a home with forlorn UK garage fans. Then, you have ‘atmospheric’, which seems to be the favorite of most spliff-heads and music critics (this, of course, can be broken down further but then we’d be here all day -we don’t want to be here all day, now do we). It is in this last type that we find one Dave Huismans, or simply 2562.

Mr. Huismans has actually been around for a while, producing other broken-beat styles under guises like Dogdaze and A Made Up Sound. Yet once his offerings as 2562 got noticed, it alerted many to the idea that dubstep had plenty of creative room to pursue, should producers be adventurous enough to do so. In Huismans’ case, he brought a dub techno aesthetic to his tunes, leading the genre to something more deep and clinical rather than dirty and grimy. His first album under this moniker -Aerial- got plenty of kind words thrown on it last year, so obviously a follow-up is going to be met with higher expectations. Fortunately for ol’ Dave, he’s managed meet such expectations with Unbalance -for some, overwhelmingly so.

He’s taken the idea of tech influences to the next level with this album, creating a sonic soundscape that will have old-school Photek fans nodding approvingly. At first he mostly sticks to the dubstep template, with an assortment of half-step skitter beats (Flashback, Like A Dream) or funky-soul outings (Dinosaur, Lost, the latter also where you’ll find the only instance of a human vocalization) meshing with his cold outlook. Once that’s out of the way, however, Huismans begins to indulge himself, often with intriguing results.

Perhaps fittingly, it’s with the titular track Unbalance where things get wonky. The spirit of Parkes can definitely be felt here, as paranoid strings pair with an uncompromising broken tech-beat that’ll give even the most ardent dubstep dancer fits. For a while, you wonder if any sort of tune will emerge, and although a bit of structure does come about, it’s still unsettling. From there, ol’ Dave does settle his experimental drum-programming down with easily digested skippy-beats, but unfortunately can’t resist going too far in Who Are You Fooling?, a track that fails to amount to anything of note. Love In Outer Space, the lead single for the album, at least corrects such wayward beat noodling before the album ends out.

As for the rest, they’re a solid bunch of cuts, growing increasingly sci-fi in tone before the final tune, Escape Velocity, heads straight for the stars with spacey backing synths. It’s curious - maybe suitably so - that Huismans would stick the track with the most obvious bit of melody at the very end of Unbalance, but I can’t argue against it as a strong album closer.

And to be honest, if anything is going to hold Unbalance back with a general listening audience, it’s the lack of much melody to begin with. Yeah, tech-tones of this sort tend to shy away from blatant human emotions, yet the greatest techno records have always been those where the producer is able to coerce the machine to express their soul regardless of humanity-stripping technology. Such is so with this album, where cuts like Lost, Superfight, and Narita appear to be cases where Huismans let his right brain override, thus standing much taller than Like A Dream or Who Are You Fooling? -at least in a musical sense.

This is still a strong album -I’d only pin one cut as a real duffer (no points in guessing which one -no, Intro doesn’t count). Despite the singular atmosphere, I highly recommend it for anyone who even has a passing curiosity over expertly-executed tech-toned broken-beats (hyphenated enough for ya’?). Yet, is this a ‘classic’ album, as some of already hailed it as? I think not. Sure, the dubstep genre is in short supply of such releases, but Unbalance purposefully lacks what those few standout albums contain: an identifiable human soul connecting to the music itself. Even Parkes (yes, him again -can I help it if I find the similarities striking?) understood the need for this back when he was doing similar things to drum’n’bass back in the 90s. In short, Unbalance is good, but it’s no Modus Operandi.

ACE TRACKS:
Lost
Superfight
Escape Velocity


Written by Sykonee for TranceCritic.com. May not be reproduced or republished without the consent of TranceCritic.com. © All rights reserved

Title: 2562 - Unbalance
Category: Album
Sub Category: Break Beat
Reviewer: Sykonee
Related Link: 2562 MySpace
Added: December 16th 2009
Viewed: 1333 Times
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