Customer Reviews

Director's Cut

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Mr. Begg has recorded under a number of aliases and projects,
most recently S.I. Futures. This marks his first proper album under his own name, and is fantastic. This is what Kraftwerk might sound like now if they were as interested in creating innovative music as they are cycling.
But while the Kraftwerk influence is huge, Begg also mixes up the styles: breakbeat, UK garage, and, most notably,
dancehall on "Moveup". The album fades a little toward the end, but overall, easily among the top 3 "electronica" releases of the year.

Si Begg continues his worldwide electronic funk assault, this time under his own name. With Director's Cut, he shoots straight for the dancefloor and hits a bull's-eye with all targets down. The majority of the tracks are bleepy and groovy in a way that would make Herbie Hancock proud, but "Grind" almost manages to have an organic feel to it. Begg also invites vocalists for this project and not just lame MCs, either. There's a definite dearth of good female MCs, but Miss MC on "Buss" does an outstanding job of getting booties shaking. The three MCs on "Moveup" aren't quite as exciting, but they do the job. The tracks towards the end of the album lose a bit of steam, but most will still get the floor moving. You just can't stop the funk.

I bought this after hearing a single track from it: 'England.' As I bought it used it was cheap and so worth the money. It's difficult to describe but it could be a robotic version of the hymn that defines England for me, Jerusalem by Wm. Blake. If I'm not mistaken Begg's version is an electronic voice reciting the poem/hymn over which Begg has layered a really wonderful and strange musical composition of his own. It's quite good. There are a couple of other tracks on this which are good but the rest of it strikes one as mere noodling.
Having said that, it does seem that a lot of the stuff put out in the electronica genre is precisely that: electronic noodling produced for no other reason than the whim and whimsy of its creator.
The following is more than a bit of aside, but one wonders if this is the natural result of technologies which enable a person to create music without ever learning how to play it? In other words, having the ability to create music easily doesn't necessarily give one the depth of knowledge necessary to create material for a full-length album. So, more often than not, one finds that these one man productions tend to grate on one's nerves after a track or two.
Another hypothesis I've heard is that today's music industry is different and the ability of people to buy single tracks over the internet makes it unnecessary to produce a coherent and fully formed album. One needs only have one or two good songs to have a success. Perhaps this is how it has always been, but it does seem as though the electronica section is filled with albums composed of nothing more than noodling, or the musical equivalent of navel gazing.
This effort is better than that and definitely worth buying for the 'England' track alone but there remains that lingering doubt.