- Full-bore trance.
- You don't have to look far to find trance-inspired sounds in contemporary dance music, but few take the genre as seriously as Spekki Webu, whose MIRROR ZONE label focuses on ultra-psychedelic trance old and new. With his Euclidean Doorway EP, he aligns with another for-the-heads label out of Seoul called Beyond The Bridge—an outlet that pays tribute to the "tekno" of oldschool free parties and describes music with potentially unfamiliar quirky terms like "frenchcore" and "mental." It's fitting that Webu chose Beyond The Bridge for his first-ever solo EP, because the record shares the label's taste for wiggly, wobbly styles.
Opening track "Celtron Lifeform" exemplifies the MIRROR ZONE sound: it's an assemblage of eerie, springy textures and a hobbling broken beat, before it enters warp speed like the Millennium Falcon jumping into hyperspace. The rush is exhilarating every time. The pace continues on "00.4FG (Temple Version)," an absurdly fast track that hardly ever lets up but in its minimalism, it focuses on the darker, trippier side of trance so often ignored. It would make a great track for adventurous, or evil, techno DJs to play.
"Dimension 5" touches on some Goa vibes, with a throat singing texture that coats the track like a viscous film, while eerie synths add a tinge of horror. This one really captures the chemical side of trance, with a topsy-turvy mixdown that makes the track feel like it might careen off the rails at any moment. That leaves my favourite, "Photic Shift," which leans into the "mental" vibe. It's full of odd, bubbly sounds, but the drums are what you come here for. They're truly mind-melting, moving at different speeds and landing in all the wrong places. It's enough to give you a contact high.
Lista de sequência de músicas01. Celtron Lifeform
02. 00.4FG (Temple Version)
03. Photic Shift
04. Dimension 5