Review: Cosmithex - Visions Of Sound

I said a little while back, in my review of Magnus' album, that J00F Recordings basically only releases one specific sound. Well, clearly I was wrong. The label has been expanding its sound somewhat recently, and in Cosmithex they have something new and very awesome to add to the roster. Cosmithex makes balls to the wall, no-nonsense trance, like everyone else on the label, but his sound doesn't fit neatly into the dark prog-psy sound of J00F. There's a more old-school sensibility here, notably in the lashings of scorching acid lines, and also a tough, techy edge.

Whatever little sub-genre you want to shove it into, it doesn't really matter. Visions Of Sound is an absolute stone-cold motherfucker of an album. I've had it for about a week now and I can't stop playing it. Now, you may think of me as a complete hypocrite here, because this is basically an album of non-stop club bangers, the kind of album I've criticised others for making. I guess some clarity is needed here, because I've only criticised others for doing it badly. As I said in the Orkidea review:

If you're going to do an album of pure dancefloor cuts, that's fine. Just make sure you know how to make three or four different kinds of dancefloor cut.

Cosmithex, crucially, has a different kind of club cut for every track on this album. Every track has a different tempo and a different take on the same core sound - an impressive balancing act. There are throbbing tracks, all out bangers, more floaty, atmospheric tracks, deeper brooding cuts, heads down momentum builders and many more. It's hard to decide which tracks are highlights - I love Beyond Time, Alchemy, It's Only A Dream, Projection... ah hell, I love them all. What's very, very important here is that these tracks are all club cuts, but that doesn't mean any of them have boring percussive intro-outro sections that eat up valuable listening minutes, kill the momentum and have no business being on an album in the first place. All of these tracks have proper intros and don't labour over the outros either - one or two tracks simply fade out. All of this makes them quite hard to DJ with, as I've discovered when trying to mix them, but it means they're so much more interesting and work so much better in the album context.

I'm not going to blather on about this album too much, because the number that's about to follow should impress upon you just how impressed I am by it Only time will tell just how much I love it when the initial honeymoon phase has worn off, but for now this is just fucking ace in a way too few albums this year have been.

Genre: Trance.
Stupid Arbitrary Rating: 10/10