ALTERNATI-V- – Turning Points
From Patpong Records in Bucharest comes this debut album by Romanian DJ Victor Mihailescu (Victor M). It’s a generally old school collection of chilled house and downtempo tunes, somewhere in between Way Out West and Chicane. The first half of the album is dominated by mellow, chill-out instrumentals, the exception being ‘Better’, a laid back pop-house tune sung by Danny Claire.
‘Hypersleep’ opens the second half promising more of the same, albeit of a slightly darker hue, but then two and a half minutes in it breaks out in a rash of furious breakbeats. The tempo is kept up by ‘Connected’ and ‘Wavy Monday’, two excellent progressive house tunes. ‘Night Revelation’ offers more of the same, but a little more generic. ‘Perfect Cure’ uses the same basic melody and rhythm track, but adds a vocal by Danni Ionescu whose indie-rock singing doesn’t really fit. By the way, Danny is female and Danni is male!
In truth, there’s nothing on Turning Points that couldn’t easily have been recorded ten years ago. Mind you, that’s true of the vast majority of stuff you hear on the radio these days. At its worst the album can be a bit flat and unsinspired, but there are plenty of good moments – tracks 6 to 8 are especially strong. The release date is 21st August and more details can be found on the Patpong website.
For more from Dez please read his blog Music Musings & Miscellany