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With his fine debut album, Color Vs. The Light Swedish musician Phillip Jidbrandt proved that, despite having had its heyday in the mid-90s, trance music was far from being a spent force in 2005 & still had plenty of excitement to offer, in the right hands, at least! This follow-up continues in the same vein & while hard core rivet heads will no doubt run a mile from the album as a whole & the more commercial feel that graces the opening 'Angel On Earth' in particular, it certainly wastes no time in getting into its stride with Zandra Lundmark's expressive vocals further adding to the track's commercial qualities & doing the same sort of job that Maria Naylor did for Robert Miles. It is a very enjoyable opener but the danger here is that such a commercial approach can lead to an overtly twee sound, a pitfall that Jidbrandt is not immune to, as proven by both 'Fade Away' & 'Summer Girl' (the latter of which is one of the tracks that ADD head honcho Todd Durrant co-wrote) while the horribly corny lyrics that grace the equally embarassingly-titled 'Super Groove Style' prove to be the album's nadir by some margin; I mean, even Two Unlimited would have turned their noses up at a line like 'I love your super groove style'!! This isn't the first time he's come a cropper on lyrics so he really needs to watch this. Overall, however, the pros outweigh the cons with Durrant also contributing to the far better 'Desire', where some mock-guitar sounds add a good deal more grit to another lively track while The Dignity Of Labour's Kirk Taylor not only wrote but sings on 'Magical Moments', where some expansive synth melodics provide a further kick. Where this album really comes into its own, though, is on rousing full-on trance workouts as 'Charisma' & 'Reset', both of which build into rousing, majestic anthems that build up an almighty head of steam & in so doing easily equal the greatest trance anthems of the 90s although 'Audiophilosophy' goes one better thanks to the judicious insertion of the word 'hey', a simple move & another corny one, perhaps but a much more successful one in this case while the penultimate track, 'Obsession', where a greater feeling of tension hold sway on another punchy track, provides a stark contrast to the mellow, bittersweet closer that is 'Suddenly' where Lundmark again proves her worth as a vocalist & the accoustic guitar colouring further adds to the track's romantic qualities, just right for an evening stroll by the sea, hand in hand with the one you love!! |
