Artist Final Selection Title Heading For Graceland: daydReams & nightsHades Format/Cat BFCD 016 Label: Black Flames Records Style Synthpop Date of review September 2004 Reviewer Brad Podray Rating 7/10 Back to top

Final Selection’s “Heading for Graceland,” half new material and half remixes, is your average meandering in to the world of synthpop spliced with a subtle, brooding nature and lightly coated with 1980s synthetic melodies. There’s a healthy dose of dance beats, synth melodies, and arpeggiated basslines for your listening pleasure. The vocal style is comparable to what would happen if Ronan Harris of VNV nation was given a large dose of novocaine earlier in the day by the dentist, went home for bed, and before falling asleep, recorded an album. This is not really a bad thing, just the best way to exemplify this style in words. The vox are soothing and serve well to fit the particular sonic stylings of the album. Tracks 1-5 are new material and 6-10 are remixes from artists such as Asian Faction and Rector Scanner. The remixes tend to be more experimental than the original songs. Rectum Scanner’s remix of “I Never Wanted More” was written with the EBM handbook in the studio and E.S.R.’s “Absent Minded” is enjoyably beaty. Sonic gold nuggets are found interspersed throughout the 57.5 minue long CD and many of these fall on the remix end of the album. While “At the Gates of Utopia(instrumental)” is a melodic and well-thought out piece, some of the other original tracks fall ever-so-slightly short. They aren’t bad, but they aren’t exactly going to push the boundaries of electronic music and give rise to a new era. Summary: Pros: Conceptually, it appears that Final Selection achieved their goal. “Heading for Graceland” is an album awash with what could only be described as sentimentality. Cons: Low energy on the album and low diversity between tracks.