Cape Town

Dave Seaman | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 22, 2000)
• Original Release Date: August 22, 2000
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Global Underground
• ASIN: B00004TM09
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #161,217 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. The Hacienda Must Be Built [Re: Constructed]

2. The Four Elements "Earth"

3. Free at Last

4. Porcelain

5. Guten Morgen

6. Deep Love

7. Cascades of Colour

8. Vellum

9. Wuarp

10. 1-800 Ming

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Sacred Cycles

2. So Many Ways

3. The Baguio Track

4. Peakin'

5. 4AM

6. The Snake

7. Modo VII

8. The Fall

9. Horizons

10. Zerotonine

See all 11 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

PROGRESSIVE MELT IN YOUR MOUTH MIX ALBUM

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best GU released so far, April 9, 2001

By 

Igor Gershenson "I^G" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cape Town (Audio CD)

alright, I was not going to write anything but I am just sick and tired of all these elitist technofiles labeling everything that has a melody as 'commercial.' Why is melody bad? what world are you guys from? Melody is what music is all about. Sure, minimalistic stuff that digweed spins (example: Hong Kong and LA) is good but it is not as accessible, and you need to be in the right mood to enjoy it. Seaman tries to appeal to a wider audience, and so what? This notion that if your tracks have some sort of melody, no matter how good, then you are not a 'true' dj is nonsense. by the way, Seaman's selections, while more accessible than those of, say, sasha or digweed, still do not represent mainstream dance music. seaman is very good at mixing minimal with melodic tracks. I love this compilation, and if you liked seaman's Renaissance Awakening, you will too. enough said.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disc 2 rocks, but disc 1 is a bit off, February 12, 2001

By 

hannibalsmith "hannibalsmith" (Van Nuys, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cape Town (Audio CD)

If you look back the last couple of years at the dance music seen, there is one label, Global Underground, and its flagship series of "City" albums that stand head and shoulders above the rest of the industry in terms of releasing quality house and trance mixed by top name DJ's without caving in to the temptation to produce cheesy compilation CD's filled with nothing but highly commercialized music. In fact, Global Underground has also been party to one of Dave Seaman's best previous works, Global Underground: Buenos Aires.

Needless to say, then, any album released on the GU label has some pretty big shoes to fill. Dave Seaman's Cape Town, while certainly no slouch and no doubt a pretty good album, is simply neither his, nor the label's, best work - for that I highly recommend GU: Buenos Aires or Renaissance Awakenings - two superb albums - in fact GU: Buenos Aries is my favorite of all the GU albums.

Both of Cape Town's two CD's share a common flaw - that one of the beginning tracks is a bit out of place on both discs. Without these two tracks, I'd likely award 4 stars for disc 1, and 5 for disc 2. As it is...

On disc 1, its the Futureshock remix of Moby's Porcelain. Not only doesn't it really fit, but the sound of this track (which to me seems neither housey or trancey, really) dominates almost the entire first half of the disc, and the disc never really recovers. The disc does have a good moment or two -the Ananda Project's Cascade of Colors has a nice vocal, and Vellum's Inertia and Wuarp's Gloat are both notable. In the end, though, this disc deserves 3 and a half stars at most - a bit of a dissapointment for a Seaman album.

Disc 2 is a marked improvement and for the most part ranks up with just about any other single disc from the GU albums. The only problem is that again, one track, in this case Luzon's Bagio Track, does not fit in well with the rest of the CD. Fortunately, this track doesn't dominate the sound of the CD as much as Porcelain does on disc 1, and its possible to listen straight through it without getting too distracted. On the plus side, this disc features some utterly lovely tracks and some great female vocals.

Disc 2 starts with Sacred Cycles - a nice track with a sampled narrator talking about religious tolerance in the background. Planisphere's So Many Ways is up next, which probably isn't quite up to an 'anthem' level of energy, but is none-the-less a very good hard driving track. Bleachin's Peakin' provides about a 2 minute segway from Luzon's Bagio Track into 4am by Ballroom, which is one of the discs highlight tracks in my opinion. Here some great female vocals convey the scene in a club at, you guessed it, 4AM. Eventually the disc makes it to Way Out West's The Fall - probably the most recognizable track on the disc. The energy level picks up a bit over the next couple of tracks, peaking with Zerotonine by Junkie XL, another stand out track that mixes in perfectly with what follows, Highland's No Way Out. No Way Out is hands down the best track on the disc. It lowers the energy level as to bring the listener a bit back down to reality from the high energy level of Zerotonine, and again features one of Seaman's staples - gorgous female vocals.

So, disc 2 would heartily qualify for 5 stars if not for the Bagio Track being thrown in out of place. As it is, I think disc 2 deserves 4.5 stars.

Overall, I give this album 4 stars, though disc 2 saves it from a much worse rating. And lets face it, the price of this album and its two discs is similar to most other single disc albums - so even if you don't like CD1 as I don't, disc 2 is still probably worth it for the money. None the less, before buying this album I recommend checking out most of the other CD's on the GU label - especially Hong Kong, Ibiza, San Fransisco, and of course Buenos Aries, or any of the other works I've mentioned in this review, most of which are truly deserving of 5 stars or more.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Class A trance, a la Seaman, February 10, 2004

By 

Anand Subramaniam (Chennai, INDIA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cape Town (Audio CD)

Representing the pinnacle of the evolution of Dave Seaman's trance sound, GU 016 - Cape Town is the logical extension of GU012: Buenos Aires. Showing the onward movement of the underground sound to encapsulate chunkier, darker rhythms, Seaman paints a superb soundscape with both discs.

Disc 1 is mellower, but characteristically bouncy. Starting with the high, reedy strains of Rui Da Silva, Seaman explores some quite accesible melodies, typified by Moby's "Porcelain". The disc moves into high gear with the superb placement of Mandalay, almost entirely to facilitate a mind-blowing mix into The Ananda Project's "Cascades of Color". After leaving you in high-energy-mode with the remaining tracks, Seaman progresses onto Disc 2.

There's a colloquial Tamil term that my mates and I use to describe blazing, searing, music that glows with incandescent energy - "adi-thadi". Few discs deserve this description more than Disc 2 of this mix. From the moment the spoken vocal sample of a Hindu ascetic dissolves into the fast, booming drums of Pete Lazonby's "Scared Cycles", you know there's no going back. Every track on the disc is perfectly placed, and is stand-out by itself. By the time Seaman provides the perfect closing sequence of James Holden's "Horizons", Junkie XL's "Zerotonine" and "No Way Out" (I forget the producer's moniker), you're ready to empathize with the female vocal in Ballroom's "4 A.M" - ".....I need a cigarette".

Disc 1 : Solid, melodic, without being overwhelming. 3.5 stars
Disc 2 : Adi-thadi, period. 5 stars
Reviewer's Tilt : 1/2 star
Overall : 4.75 stars. Well worth your time & money.