Mind Controls

Stepping ahead from D&B's trusted path TheSolz's debut album 'Mind Controls' on Soluz Records (UK) busts you with a fix of electronic overdrive. Based in London TheSolz has crafted his musical constellations over an amazing 20 years of club, rave and festival music. Starting as a DJ curating rare groove and acid house during the summer of 1989 TheSolz remains heads down on creating a toxic brew of vibes. Mind Controls opens with the topless funk of 'Basements' - its cranked snare refrain and 303 riff scoring your attention with never ending graffiti. Jazz edged with a moog workout thats phat all the way, this gives more than its downtempo surface reveals at first glance. Next 'DreamChaser' delivers a vox from D&B diva DMO that rocks to uncharted seas of stripped cyborg beats and rasping electro bass. Check out the bourbon of D&B mixed with freshly crushed electric guitar... TheSolz steals all known coordinates with his title track 'Mind Controls' - a dub strain that infects all with its wall of bass, over-clocked synth and sample edits. Armed with a morphing arrangement you'll be clucking for more even after the eight minutes of extended domination. Somehow TheSolz cranks our racks a little further than admissable with a straining upright bass cliff hanger 'The Pavlov Switch'. Again aztec backbeats lock your soul to a voodoo spell that offers little chance of relief. The fifth track 'Like Hell Like You' takes a look at digital dancehall covered in improvised chocolate wobwob sauce - check the vox-like effects from a coarse filtered synth texture... Spooky huh??? A halfway crossing, 'Dungeons & Dragons' offers a sophisticated 'Cos' play of paced down D&B, strings and sine bass. TheSolz uses a cars electric window and repeated abused synth to introduce a sinister edge to the party scene. Tempo soon erupts all over your body at an ubiqious 170bpm for 'NU-FU' - a slickwheeled burnout tuned to kill. Worth nodding to are the pin-prick snares dotting in all the right spaces. 'VOLTX' slides to a dubstep flavoured collage that grinds frequency with the steroids of synth LFO's and 'talking' filters. Soon after 'Lifepools' provides a chill synch'd beat laced with glitches and necrosis electronica. Still D&B but somehow bleached and removed - the circuit bent workout at the end points toward awesome technoscapia unseen. Then, just when you thought it was safe to shower 'Spice & Axis' drops with a wall of noise, chants and tabla, chopping its way to the next rave. Worth paying attention till the final db's recede TheSolz utilizes energy within a locked timbre of laptop music that elsewhere flops into repeat attacks. As each track pours from the stereo a new twist takes the arrangement to a higher place. Take onboard for its angle on things to come...