The only pieces of dryft material before this full-blown album which most of
us have had access to were the dryft remix of "Enzyme" on Further and the
track "crash" on the Exoskeleton 2 compilation. Luckily, dryft did not fall
into the trap of putting the very best of Cadoo's d&b work on these CDs in
order to sell more album copies. In fact, dryft's first album cell shows
a great diversity in sounds and even some songs on it which are better than
Gridlock. Amazingly, the diverse songs still work together without the aid
of the hidden transitional tracks Gridlock is famous for.
The harsh drums smoothed over by entrancing drones formula will appeal to fans
of Gridlock, but this CD has more to offer. The drums have been accelerated
and warped, the melodies and drones are lighter and more intricate, and many
electro and IDM elements and sounds have been added.
The first song, "slalom", starts off with very delicate and intricate sounds
of the type made by Daniel Myer lately. Very harsh drums quickly come into
play, along with beautiful drifting melodies.
The next song, "beatz & vapour", clearly shows how different of a project
dryft is to Gridlock. Low and menacing bass drums, basslines, speeding drums,
warped drums, and nicely stretched noises shift around within the mix of this
song.
"end of the in" has the hardest bass drums on the album with the lowest
bassline, and also holds the distinction of being the only track on this album
with vocals. They are delivered in a dub style to fit with the feel of the
rest of this extremely staticy & crunchy song.
"ddt" begins with quickly rolling and warping light drum sounds, then adds in
hard synth sounds which fall down onto the floor that the heavy drums are
already pounding. The song breaks in the middle to play faster drum & bass,
adds back in the nice synth sounds and high
The synths flow in and recede away along with a hint of the upcoming drum line
at the beginning of "x11", then bursts into a full song for about 5 seconds
before it bizarrely echoes away. The drums return with more sounds accompanying
them, which is the pattern for this song. Just when it seems to calm down,
done in a variety of ways, the song always returns in a new and transformed
form with new elements. This is definitely one of the best songs on here.
"Crash" begins with drums mixed with emphasis on stereo listening that come in
and out of the song, sometimes leaving the flowing and resonating melodies to
carry the song themselves. This song is the most similar to earlier impressions
of dryft gained from the remix of "Enzyme" and, of course, its own appearance
on the Exoskeleton 2 compilation.
"untitled" seems slower than the other songs, but after two minutes of a
calm intro it blows up with layers of drum lines separable from each other
at times only by their position around the listener. The way the song
melts away at the end is yet another unexpected suprise in this song.
For fans of Aphex Twin (especially '96-'97 era) and Autechre, "fmw" contains
the same sorts of d&b influenced IDM of those bands, even with nice melodies.
The warped drums on this song make it another favorite.
"avatar" is a smooth and peaceful song for this style of music, and will
probably be a hit among fans of the prettier side of Bill Leeb's dance music
projects.
"cell weight" ends this album in much the same way that Further ended, with
a long ambient piece calming the album to a resolution at the end. This time,
there are some quick blips and drums within the song intermittenty firing in
interesting rhythms. The hard drums of earlier would only cover the nice
sound design job on this track, and are thankfully left out.
As on Further, KSP deliver a remix, this time of "fmw". This mix is a very
pretty and spacey electro track, a bit short (as was the original) but nicely
done so that the entirety of the album is enjoyable to listen to.
This CD overall will be enjoyed by fans of drum & bass influenced electro
artists like Daniel Myer and Equinox, while still delievering Gridlock type
sounds to please fans of darker electro industrial.
Review by Nicholas Joseph Ferro 5/2/00