(08.03.06) There’s a huge load of exquisite electro coming out these days. Solenoid on Orac, The Wee DJs on Touchin’ Bass, the amazing little 3″ CD by Lowfish in Hymen’s Travel Sickness box-set and obviously this album by Umwelt on the much respected Satamile.
You instantly know that Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation is a sick record, because “Don’t Trust Me” opens excitingly with razor sharp beats and a menacing bass that sounds like a swarm of locusts thru your brain: the first time I put the needle on, my whole flat was resonating apocalyptically. A lovely feature of this album is the varied mood of the tracks, “Kiss In The Dark” is much slower, but epic and spacious like a Vangelis soundtrack, and similarly “Esa” changes once again towards a ghetto-tech influenced booty shaker, where a growing bassline underlines the aptly placed sample ‘crank this motherfucker up!’, the perfect hybrid between DJ Assault and Silicon Scally. I should mention Carl A. Finlow with a reason, Umwelt is an ace producer at the same level; it is hard to believe the high levels of bass and crisp percussion on this release, especially in the tracks with a slower pace recalling Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, like “Secret Of A Black World Part 2 and 1” and “Mogul Project,” playing the latter I nearly blew my subwoofer. Absolutely no fillers here, “Outlaw World” is more noisy, with loads of industrial distortions and a growling acid bassline, and finally “Elysium Planum” is another relaxing cinematic piece with distant wailings.
The CD version features three more classic tunes, a nice addition for the digital support consumers, since I only own Decal’s Release Through Velocity released by Satamile on this format and Electro Music Specialists’ album is quite hard to find. Really solid record, electro music at its finest, like you could expect less from such a top notch label.
Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation is out now on Satamile.
