System 7 – Up

Cripes, what a disappointment. :( Up sees Steve and Miquette now moving to ape minimal techno and trance so they can "stay relevant", they have once again forgotten practically everything that made their music unique, powerful, emotional and creative in the early to mid 90s.

This is, throughout, minimal trance banging with absolutely no memorable melodies or guitar riffs at all. Instead, there's crazy sound effects, noise builds, drops and all the now overdone minimal club tricks. Only the opening track "PositiveNoise" has some vaguely moving guitar phrases, and it isn't until the excruciating "Plasmatic Park" that we get to hear any proper guitar soloing. Everything else is mindless noise-rush minimal trance / techno bollocks that has become a cliche already. Oh, there IS guitar here, but usually only the now-overused delayed picking.

There's a particular nadir on Up, "Funky Gong" samples Gong with a descending guitar riff, and a ridiculous vocal part. It doesn't fit at all, set to minimal blippery that outstays its welcome within seconds.

I'm sure tons of people are enjoying this album and will claim I'm listening to this wrong. But there was a time when Steve and Miquette used System 7 as a way to combine modern dance rhythms with guitar pyrotechnics and synth bliss. There's very little of the latter two here, only endless, minimalistic, undercomposed club thump thump. Shame really, Phoenix wasn't bad.

Another great release by S7. As usual they continue to update their sound and here on Up we have a strong modern techno influence, not too hard, not too minimal, but something in between. Very accessible and mixable with deep bass, chuggy hihats and the trademark S7 pads and sequences that take the music to a much more atmospheric level than most techno out there. Only problem I can find is the disc is mastered too loud. I don't how Steve & Miquette keep doing it but I'm not complaining - Up is a must have for any techno or trance fan.