Sometimes Hymen releases such great amount of various music per year that it gets similar to some production line with piles of discs of very low quality moving along it. To my mind Tonikom with its album Epoch belongs to this very class of music. In general, it must be said that reduction of quality at the expence of quantity will give bad results and will lead to partial or total loss of interest of the auditorium to the label's releases. Dangerous game played by the label's manager Stefan Alt. Such situations already took place in the label's history, let's remember the first fall of Mille Plateaux when the amount of label's production in 5-7 times exceeded the interest and purchase ability of its listeners.Well, let's turn to the analysis of Tonikom's Epoch. First of all, such music is not characteristic of Hymen, the album contains music of 90s - drum'n'bass and trance labels. From the very beginning of the first track "Running As Fast As I Can" we catch the whole release's theme. Surprising is that in 2007-2008 somebody still records and releases such music.
Track "Locked Out" starts with hackneyed loops available in any samples library, just imagine the sound of these key samples and you'll understand everything at once. Headquarter of Hymen/Ant-Zen is situated far away from Berlin but who knows, maybe the invasion of dance club music, rave and Love Parade passed over the whole Hymen records' team? Quite realistic, at least I have such a feeling...
Track "Dark River" includes enormous number of transe synthesizers and drum'n'bass.The title of the album as well as music itself are too ordinary and boring. Many years ago such music was produced in great amounts, unfortunately such stuff is still produced nowadays. No new idea, no new creative desicions.
After track "Swollen" my acquaintance with Tonikom and its album Epoch quited for a long time, maybe forever. I can't stand modern music of rave and for rave, too little content and deepness. Only continuous sound form and straight, boring trance drums, even worse than classical trance-music. Bluntly speaking, it's just banal dance club culture.
Nevertheless it's possible that such music will have the authentic sound somewhere in the mountains, maybe in Crimea, such music demands too much space. At the height of 500 or 1500 meters Tonikom will sound more or less well. If you are planning rave in the mountains, take this album, there it will work.
- Tonikom
- Hymen records