Paul Nagle & Carl Matthews Ixion's Wheel Play: Lo-Fi   Mid-Fi   Hi-Fi   Download: Lo-Fi   Mid-Fi   Hi-Fi (Excerpt from track 'Punishment of the Gods')

This is a superb collaborative effort. Mix Paul's smooth melodic sensibilities to Carl's aggressive sometimes radical technique and you get a blistering mainly rhythmic album with just the right combination of subtlety and mayhem. They describe it as a concept album around the Greek myth where Ixion was condemned to revolve forever in Hades. The album basically consists of one large track split into thirteen segments.

Bright twitters and the occasional crashing effects meld with the sound of a machine then a 100 mile an hour rhythm starts up. We are only one minute into the opening track 'Abyss' and the heart is already racing- this is extremely menacing and exciting stuff. What a way to start an album! 'The Gathering' begins with an even deeper bass rhythm. This should get your head nodding and body moving. Its extremely infectious but has a mean attitude to it at the same time, there is even a 'sung' vocal sample in it which works really well. Even most of those that hate any vocal quality to their EM shouldn't be averse to this. The rhythms become even more devastating as the track progresses and we surge into 'Valinor', a superb sequence thundering onwards. Overall the track has a very 'trance' feel to it. It would be ideal to listen to with trippy flashing lights all around you.

'The Departure' begins chaotically. Out of the mayhem come crashes of sound and a rapid swirling sequence. In contrast a flute plays over the top and gradually the mood begins to soften, though there is always that menacing edge. 'Chariots of the Gods' continues the rapid sequence from before but now the sound has changed., echoing percussion is added as well as cosmic shimmers. Suddenly the sequence stops to allow a gentle echoing melodic motif to be heard. This is 'Uncharted Region' and initially its as if we have hurtled off a cliff and are now in the calmness of freefall. A beat starts up, as if in the tranquillity we are hearing our heartbeat. This is a subtle number, each note or effect given space to work its beautiful yet eerie magic. Near the end the pace quickens as machine gun rhythms stutter into life to disappear as 'The Dark Behind the Stars' section gets underway. Its like a vast throbbing engine. A sequence breaks through. Wooshes of sound as if we are hurtling through some sort of subterranean train system add to the feeling of travelling at great speed.

'Empty Halls on Airless Worlds' is a short dark atmospheric number with very faint speaking and Morse code in the background, in fact it wouldn't have been out of place on Johannes Schmoelling's 'White Out'. Its the title track next and we return to no nonsense rhythmic mayhem, a child's voice just being heard amongst the roller coaster beats which mutate and become somewhat softer as we continue our journey via 'Punishment of the Gods' . To fit in with the title its as if we are getting whip cracks superimposed on the beats. The rhythm becomes even more insistent on 'The Gift of Fire' but there is also more of a melodic content.