Scone - Maze

I love getting packages from Japan. It's so exciting. Someone send me a wii please cos despite me pre ordering I got an e mail saying it wouldn't arrive before xmas. Cocks.....I ordered it 3 months ago..... Anyway generous Japanese people please take note!! One of my faves this week is the SCONE CD on Moamoo/ Art Union. Scone is Funckarma and Kettel... so a Dutch electronic supergroup you'd say... Or I'd say it.... I just did in fact. This is melodic electronica of the highest order. I'm getting back into this sort of gear now cos it's all unfashionable again and not everyone and his laptop is making it. The melodies on offer here are superb and both artists have brought the best out of each other making what I think is one of most tuneful melodic electronic albums I've heard in donkeys. Marvelous. For fans of Expanding, Kettel, Funckarma, Dub  etc...Maze is CD only.

Heads-up to fans of Funckarma and Kettel that these two outfits have got together for an album under the somewhat half-baked Scone (pun intended) moniker. Entitled 'Maze', it's a welcome return to a previous Funckarma version - before they got obsessed with over-abstracted DSP-pile-up beat constructions and f**ked up 303-acid-noodling at the expense of melodic and harmonic material. I think we have Kettel to thank for Being A Good Influence, since he's always stayed true to melody, even when engaging in beat trickery. 'Maze' seems, if anything, nearer to the Funcken Bros' n5MD-released work as Quench (see esp. 'Dyn' and 'Punctuated') than to any other recent Funckarma output (recent situating of which, on Sublight, for the 'Bion Glent' release, signals a straying into harder core mentalist tendencies that failed to intrigue [this listener] remotely). If I haven't dwelt on comparisons with Kettel's other work, it's because I'm less familiar with it, and what I have heard has been fairly internally diverse/eclectic (e.g. traverse 'Volleyed Iron' to 'Making Gentle Love to Famous Ladies' and then to 'Through Friendly Waters' and you've covered quite a stretch). But I reckon the lad Kettel done tremendous here knocking them Funcken Bros back into line, getting them back down to earth from up their laptoppy arses.Anyway, for those interested, 'Maze' is, if not entirely The Bomb, then at least The Missile, or possibly The Grenade.alan