- Renaissance flagship mix series Masters Series returns for a tenth installment with superstar DJ and former Mixmag editor Dave Seaman manning the decks. Musically, The Masters Series 10 is typical of the vein of progressive house Seaman has mined previously on mixes for Renaissance and Global Underground (labels he has been with since the beginning), although his tastes on the latest certainly reflect more modern trends. But fans of the type of fist pumping, melodic, peak hour prog that Seaman helped trademark will not be disappointed by any of these slight changes in style. In fact most will appreciate the peusdo psy-trance basslines or the more tribal elements he occasionally drops in discretely on both. But no matter how much Seaman gussies up the genre, it still sounds tired and generic, and that’s a very hard hand to be dealt these days.
The main flaw of this mix is that it’s just too, well, progressive. No matter how many edgy selections Seaman whips out in order to prove that he’s moved beyond the confines of the genre, the style of mixing especially gives you a sinking sensation that you’ve been down this road before. On both discs, things start off well with top shelf selections (Apparat, Fairmont, and Dusty Kid on disc one, Solomun, Mugwump, and Tim Deluxe & Sam Obernik on disc two) before Seaman evaporates the goodwill he’s built up by moving into the big room with a string of peak hour builders so cheesy and melodically overblown that you’ll wonder if you’ve been teleported back to the late 1990s. It’s the trademark prog house “journey” template of programming followed to the letter, but in 2008 it sounds more like a crutch than useful structure, and the result is sleep-inducing boredom. Not even the decent new Mark Knight remix of Underworld’s ‘Beautiful Burnout’ at the end of disc one will save you from la-la land.
In the end, The Masters Series 10 sounds like little more than a repackaged late 90s Global Underground mix or any of the numerous others Dave Seaman has already done for Renaissance in the past. In 2008 there are plenty of great new tracks out there to meet the needs of superstar jocks hankering to leave the mundane realm of progressive house, but Seaman plays it so conservatively it’s bound to disappoint even genre diehards. Come on, Dave, make the big leap.
Lista de sequência de músicasCD1
01 Apparat - Not A Number
02 Fairmont – I Need Medicine
03 Dusty Kid – Cowboys
04 Wally Lopez – Go Ahead (Patric La Funk Mix)
05 Peter Edison & George Skanderberg - Patterns Of Thought
06 Gui Boratto – Mr. Decay (Robert Babicz Universum Disco Mix)
07 Stel – Godthab
08 Christian Fischer - Karatschai Lake
09 Joe T. Vannelli - Harlem (Mark Knight Dub)
10 Skylark - Escalator
11 Eelke Kleijn – It All Comes Together c/w Couture Feat. Rachelle – Afterglow (Acapella)
12 Sennh – I Am With You
13 Sasha – Who Killed Sparky?
14 MOS – Waterhølle
15 Underworld – Beautiful Burnout (Mark Knight Remix)
CD2
01 Johannes Heil – The Coming
02 Tim Deluxe Feat. Sam Obernik - You Got Tha Touch (Martin Buttrich Vox Mix)
03 Mugwump – Memory Lane Refund (Acid Retraxion Mix)
04 Groove Garcia – Trip To Amaltea
05 Solomun – Deadman
06 Sol & Grimm – Exuma
07 Josh Gabriel - Azora
08 Popof & Nina – Blablabla
09 Popof - Brain On The Side
10 Jamie Stevens – Keep Her Space
11 Oliver Huntemann – Bakery c/w Meat Katie & D Ramirez Feat. Odissi - Stop the Revolution (Dubfire's Arrowhead Dub) [Acapella]
12 Rekorder – Rekorder 10.2
13 Solaris Heights – No Trace (Popof Remix)
14 DJ Umek – Faithful Nights