Review: Gabriel & Dresden - The Only Road

The latest offering from trance/progressive house music label Anjunabeats (founded by Above & Beyond members Jonathan "Jono" Grant, Paavo Siljamäki and Tony McGuinness) sees San Francisco's Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden offer a mixed bag into the genre.

Stumbling across this as I have today, I am pleased to see there is still some good output coming from this area of Electronic music which is often neglected by purists who favour techno, ambient, IDM or other genres as aspects of it have been too commercialized.

I personally think that's what makes trance, house and progressive house so interesting and I personally credit Ben Wall (who writes and mixes his own stuff to this day) with his fervent pursuit of the new and interesting artists and tracks in the genre, most of whom I know because of him.

Ibiza visits 3 times in 4 years in the late 2000's allowed me to experience this first hand with Ben and my other friend Richard: Judge Jules, Ferry Corsten, Markus Schultz, Above & Beyond, Armin van Buuren, Tiesto, Sasha and many more were sampled during these visits and I have to say the atmosphere in the clubs like Pacha (my personal favourite on the island), Privilege, Amnesia and others was second to none. I often dream of a return.

It's when you hear albums like "The Only Road" that it takes you back. Opening tracks "Only Road" and "Free Your Mind" nicely set the scene with a slower BPM build of house track which pumps its bass right across your ears and - especially in the case of "Free Your Mind" - creates the smoke machine, hands-in-the-air moments we all remember with its crescendo builds in the track.

"White Walls" offers a more commercially accessible track that has a nice vocal overlay, strong beats and a middle section come down/come up signature of the club scene.

"This Love Kills Me" is a little obvious for my liking and reminiscent of a few of the things that started to make David Guetta irritating: the scratchy beeps synth and the impassioned vocal which screams out SKIP TRACK....

"Underwater" by contrast is a beautiful, ethereal, piano lead track which is ambient in its initial intent before allowing itself to be enveloped by beats and deep bass sounds.

"Hospital Piano" continues the thread of stripped back here, allowing the piano to do all the work and nothing else, creating a very evocative solo piece which is lovely but stops the momentum of the album somewhat. This is a perfect example of where ordering is so critical. Perhaps it would have been better as a closing track?

We then come back to beats with "You", another radio-friendly club standard, which is nice enough to catch the attention without really evolving much.

"Sequoia" is next: the standout track of the album. Starting with an immediate beat and some pings and bounces from the samplers, the tune moves centre stage as the prototypical track to spin when the crowd are in the mood to move and lose themselves in a trance.

"Over Oceans" is similar to "You", and again totally inoffensive but it feels like it diminishes "Sequoia" as a result of it being a little limp.

"Waiting For Winter" picks up the pace again with a fast beat, gliding synths and orchestral overlays, before fading slowly into the sounds of running water...

..and segueing into "Jupiter", which takes some urgent BPMs and pulls in the listener to a place of build/stop/build/stop like a classic club tune of the late 90's/early 00's. It feels slightly nostalgic to listen to and there's elements of Faithless in the signatures.

The closing track is "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" which begins like dream sequence music from a sci-fi movie, bringing in deep synths and an elfin-like vocal. The song builds really nicely from beatless to beats, and creates a really nice ending to the album which has 3 of its strongest tracks at the back, unusually.

All in all, the mixed production quality, ordering and some of the choices for vocals and mixing let this down a little, and had they had their time over I am sure Messrs Gabriel & Dresden may have paid more attention to the tracks that work, and focused on them to develop their ideas, as opposed to putting out sub-standard filler just to get the minutes up.

When it's good it's good, but could have been more...

6/10

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