BUILT ON VOLCANOES

This starts well, with the dense, lolloping bassy groove of ‘Golden Acre’ and the dark, percussive analogue twitch of ‘Maktub’ with its seductive vocals. After that, you realise feck all happened over the 12 minutes you’ve just heard and it gets a bit dull. That’s not to say the (house) music is bad as such – it’s just a lot of the tracks utilise a similar sonic formula; dark bass, trippy FX, layered drums (all with a US slant), thus making the whole experience vaguely under whelming. The downtempo tracks break things up, but you get the feeling that’s their only role. It has its standouts – the lively bass and swirling chords on ‘Hermes’ and the tight tech groove of ‘Breakout’ – but this is an album for DJs only.