What with the recent, superlative John Peel live selection and the patchy, but intriguing HIPP.E & HALO album, London's Fabric club/ imprint had been ensuring that their quality control had lived up to their smart, individualistic sleeve designs.
With this new release, unfortunately, aesthetics and aural satisfaction part company. Yes, "Fabric 08" is again housed in its' attractive, PIL-esque metal box and snazzy 50s-style retro image, but the contents within ensure that the excitement factor here is supplied on low wattage only.
Indeed, after Peel's colourful eclecticism and Hipp.E & Halo's playful sense of adventure, this one rather pales by comparison, turning in a fairly standard bleeps, bloops'n'bass affair with only a couple of stand-outs materialising through the murk.
The highlights for this writer, then, would only really include TAKEOVER SOUND'S eerie "Together In The Dark"; the speedy and superior Euro-house of ANTHONY ROTHER'S "Die Macht"; the ultra-minimalism of TWO LONE SWORDSMAN's remix of SLAM'S "Visions" (benefitting from the added dimension of Dot Allison's keening vocal) and the closing "Fuck Me On The Dancefloor" from DISCO D/ PRINCESS SUPERSTAR, wich succeeds mostly on electro pile-up and filthy innuendo alone.
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Most of the remainder, sadly, is bog standard, state of the art minimalist tosh, with little in the way of individuality to distinguish between a list of DJs/ artists that includes TIM WRIGHT, DEPTH CHARGE, DIRTY HOSPITAL and RADIOACTIVE MAN'S own "'Ave That."
As I said earlier, recent Fabric releases, along with Peanut Butter Wolf's "Badmeaningood" set had begun to alert this writer to the positive side of DJ mix albums of late. "Fabric 08", however, only assists in reversing this impression and purely pumps up the mediocrity.
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