Syn Orange Play: Lo-Fi   Mid-Fi   Hi-Fi   Download: Lo-Fi   Mid-Fi   Hi-Fi (Excerpt from track 'Plakk')

Let's get things straight with this one immediately, if you liked the other Syn albums with their Berlin School sequencing twist……great!!! However, (and this is a big however) don't go grabbing your wallets, chequebooks and credit card details just yet thinking that this is an album of more of the same, it ain't. This one has something decidedly different to offer.

Yes the sequencing is still there, and yes the Mellotron samples still make the odd welcome appearance but on the whole this is an album of what l would have to file under trip-hop/chill out/ambient grooves. Percussion leads the way throughout, synthwork is kept largely in the background to create the mood of each piece.

Stylistically we're talking early Bassheads, the Orb, FSOL, Sunfish, System7, Capricorn with their more laid back approach to beats and rhythm. Take Paul Nagles more recent sequencer work and strip it down to the bare bones and you'd most probably be left with an album resembling 'Orange'. It seems a little odd that Syn has moved away from being mainstream SMD fare over to something that will most probably only appeal to die hard Syn fans and/or completists. So let's give the album a run through.

The set commences well enough with 'Connected'. OK it's very cyclical not much happens, just a simple rhythm and synth motif going around and around, but not a bad opener though. 'In the Void' starts, great atmospherics, the synthwork has a sinister edge but the rhythm and bass are firmly entrenched in dance mode?? I'm waiting for someone to start rapping over the piece which may improve things adding more weight and edge to the music. This is a track that could have come straight off a Massive Attack album from a decade ago. There is a place for this style, but at SMD, will it really fit in??

'Inside my mind', and we are straight in with a good drum pattern, plenty of potential for something useful to happen here. Thirteen minutes later and I've elected to put the kettle on rather than keep listening to this, sounding like it was one long improvisation with too little happening. Nice sound effects at the end, but were they worth waiting for???

Mellotron choirs open up track 4 'Human Spirit'. It's an uneasy mix of dancey dancey groove and old vintage Mellotron samples, again sounding like it was recorded 'on the fly'.

'Transcend your Limitations' and l am transcending mine right now! At ten and a half minutes this is a track riddled with references to other big names that were generating this brand of chill out in the early to mid nineties. For a track this length you really do need the most basic of ideas to develop in some way shape or form, but not today. This is a drawn out stripped back pastiche of Synthetik/Kevin Bates. The energy has left the Hi Energy element of the music. With an over reliance on repetitive short speech samples, musically it plods along.

'Thought Patterns', ah we're back on track, though in an avant-garde sort of a way. Conrad Schnlitzers work came to mind with this 8 minuter.

'Plakk' provides us with more variation. We've now moved on from chill out straight into a typical techno riff. I'm now thinking Inna City, Black Box and more importantly with these kinds of references how on earth is this album going to fit in anywhere with SMD crowd??

'Know no end' and l am checking the CD player to see how much longer this CD goes on for, (what you might call a bad sign)……….and finally the title track of the album is upon us which again is too long and of too little substance.

I note that the album has been referred to as 'minimalist techno', this is terminology l'd come across many moons ago when DJ's took to producing their own dance/trance tracks from loops and samples,(ala Armand Van Heldon). The music doesn't flow and certainly isn't vibrant enough for comparison due in no small part to a complete lack of counter-rhythmn. The mix is clean but spartan. The music itself unfortunately fails to connect, sounding generated rather than composed, is Syn just having an off day??