Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
what any fan can wish for, November 1, 2004
Die hard fans of Juno Reactor will not be upset with this album. It has all the elements of the classical Juno Reactor sound and musical style. Then they threw in some really fun new twists: a lot of flamenco-style guitars, orchestral and even some choral integration. The ability to keep your established sound while adding something new and interesting to the music is something so few bands can do after an album or two, Juno Reactor is to be highly commended for their acomplishment in this album.
I personally find much of the music on this disc to be some of the best modern electronic fusion with traditional styles of music since Enigma III: Le Roi est Mort, Vive le Roi. If you like that disc you'll appreciate Labyrinth as well. It has a feel similar to some of the more recent works by Delerium. On the other hand, if you like any other Juno Reactor, you'll probably still like this album.
Some of the content on this disc sounds to have been influenced by Don Davis, the composer of the score to the Matrix with whom Juno Reactor worked for the soundtracks to those films. This includes tracks other than just Mona Lisa Overdrive (which I might add is a great track). I have no complaints about that however.
Overall this is a good disc for fans of classical Juno Reactor, and a good disc to give a chance to even if you haven't like them in the past because it has so much new.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not their best, but still great. A review for Juno fans, October 27, 2004
The new offering from Juno Reactor is really good. The first two tracks, which run together, "Conquistador 1 & 2" are my favorite Juno tracks ever and I've liked Juno a lot for a while. This album lays witness to more voices used in the mix, along with the now Juno standard of using many sorts of instruments along side. This is not to say that there are no electronic sounds, for of course there are many of those as well. This is more of an album that its predecessor "Shango," yet not quite as cohesive as "Bible of Dreams." A lot of the songs are fiercer and faster than traditional Juno material, which is a nice change; if you have heard the mixes of the 2 songs from the Matrix movies, then you have a slight idea: lots of violent, tribalesque drumming and a general war-like feel. The album does not really slowdown once it begins with the initial buildup of the first two songs, so there is no time to relax.
This album fits into the progression they have been following since Bible of Dreams in terms of enhanced and excellent production, live instruments mixed with electronics and creative, new ideas. Better than "Shango," not quite up to "Bible of Dreams" and not really comparable (because of being such different music) to "Transmissions" or "Beyond the Infinite."
If you are new to Juno Reactor, I suggest "Bible of Dreams," as it is more accessible. If you are already a Juno fan, get this unless you hated Bible and Shango.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven..., June 12, 2005
I suppose if I had never heard Shango, I probably would have rated this latest effort from Juno Reactor as a 4, but Ben Watkins and company set a really high standard of musical synthesis that is hard to better.
"Conquistador" adds some nice arcosanti-sounding bells (part I) and interesting sounding backwards percussion (part II) to a laid back spanish guitar piece that echos "Pistolero," but otherwise adds nothing sonically to the superior efforts in Shango. "Mona Lisa Overdrive" is nowhere near as compelling a composition as "Masters of the Universe"... And so on...; I'm not adverse to recycling song ideas if the result is at least as good as the originals, but many of the tracks on Labyrinth fall short.
There were a few departures worth mentioning; "Giant" attempts to add rock drums to a generally uninspired composition and fails badly; "War Dogs" fares better by using rock drumming to augment JR's usual polyrhythm mayhem.
"Zwara" was much more along the lines of what I hoped for in Labyrinth; drawing in ever more stylistic elements into a great groove -- all kinds of fun. "Navras" and the tense almost creepy buildup of "Mutant Message" were also very good extensions of the JR sonic universe...
So with about 50% of Labyrinth breaking new ground or at least tilling the soil well, I cast my vote with the reviewers that gave this outing a 3.5. The better moments here are exceptional and are well worth the purchase.
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