I bought this purely from the recommendation of members of amazon.co.uk, as usual.

It’s different. Different, in an amazing way. With old English samples, accordions and all sorts of instruments it feels familiar and peaceful. According to minister-of-dub of amazon.co.uk:

Second Light is like a spliff - fuelled trek across the English Countryside, taking in caves, oceans and sailors (could just be me!)with Mr. Kipling at your side. Theres an even more spititual feel about this album; it is so chilled out it just fills you with a sense of peace and well being.

I agree, it’s a beautiful album and definitely worth it if you like something very different from any dance you’ve heard before!

My rating: 4/5

Amazon rating: 5/5

I’m not one for making music, but this new ‘Pacemaker’ looks interesting.  A pocket sized DJ mixing device by Tonium, you load tracks onto it then use gestures to mix them up.  My opinion is you either buy a proper mp3 player if you want to listen to music, or proper DJ decks if you want to mix - I don’t understand who’d spend a lot of money on halfs.

Review at dancenode.com

 Some random stuff by Deadmau5 for you to download.

the idea back then was to do a thing called “Project 56″ which was 56 tracks for people with short attention spans…  instead of waiting years to finally throw it together,  i figured i’d just toss it to everyone.

so!  feel free to download and exploit these tracks in any way your evil heart desires….  if you use these commercially, all i ask is that you give credit where credit is due!

Go to samples

This is a compilation of Daft Punk’s work plus a few remixes, so in a way I’m reviewing all of their work (though some of their best stuff is left out). Interestingly, Daft Punk fell way below Justice in the Top 100 DJs list, even though Justice imitate them.

Unfortunately, the tracks not a continuous in the mix CD since it’s a compilation, so the jumble of tracks leave it far from Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 album which is brilliant. Also, many of the tracks aren’t Daft Punk’s best, ‘Musique’ and ‘Something About Us’ for instance include a lame robot voice and are uninteresting. ‘Robot Rock’ has potential to be brilliant but in 4 and a half minutes Daft Punk hardly change a thing. ‘Da Funk’ is great, along with ‘Around the World’ and ‘One More Time’. The remixes suck. Buy Alive 2007 if you like Daft Punk, even if it costs much more.

Commonly seen as a disappointment by the Chemical Brothers, and it’s easy to tell why.  Exit Planet Dust was good, Dig Your Own Hole was brilliant and then they changed their genre - losing the big beat factor that they were so good at.  Surrender was mediocre, and so is this, dropping the standard.

‘Come With Us’ and ‘It Began in Afrika’ are alright at the right time, but sometimes feel loud and boring.  Lots of the album is just normal - nothing special, setting the trend for the whole thing.  The song to note is ‘The Test’, which uses the right instruments to create the druggy experience Richard Ashcroft of the Verve is singing about.