Customer Reviews

trace

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...In a word, NO. Anyone who argues that electronic music is devoid of feeling need only listen to the latest by Mike Wells & Cadoo (aka Gridlock)....trace. Gridlock has abandoned its industrial-esque haunting vocals and distorted, abrasive percussion for a more flowing, ambient style that's really unlike anything else out there. The rhythms are still here, but are pushed into the background as the synths take the spotlight. It's new, but unmistakeably Gridlock.

trace is perfect as background music for any number of activities, but also serves as a fantastic escape when experienced through headphones - you may be surprised where your mind takes you. The album is almost completely instrumental, but is stronger as The Synthetic Form and Further (Gridlock's two previous full-lengths) in that the emotional effect upon the listener is more profound -- lyrics are not needed for expression here, and in fact would dull the impact. As Further was a leap past Synthetic Form, trace is a launch into the stratosphere.

I feel this is one of the best electronic albums yet recorded. Gridlock has taken its innovative trademark sound and expanded it tenfold, and despite the album's title, trace is their fullest and most complete work to date. This album will please everyone from fans of Enya and Tangerine Dream to early Delerium and Skinny Puppy. Gridlock deserves to be in the upper echelon of modern recording artists (and I stress the word "artist") -- and though I hope they gain more exposure, I'm betting they don't. They've evolved into something beyond us hapless mortals. Hear what you've been missing - trace is unclouded genius.

Unfortunately, Cadoo and Wells have stopped making music under Gridlock. They record under different names now. However; in the time that they made music I think Trace was probably their best album. Trace has some very ambient sounding tracks on it, and the duo also puts the ambient sounding tracks in back of the more harsh sounding music. Its simply wonderful. You can listen to this at any time of the day. Its an amazing cd. Formless followed this and it is a great one too.

Gridlock continue to impress me.

As on FURTHER, the Bros. Grid offer us a seamless medley of reverberating synth strings and erupting/dissolving rhythmic architecture. On the one hand, comparisons to Vangelis' BLADERUNNER score seem pretty apt... As for the beats, I'm not so sure. While a standard bass drum creeps in here and there, more often the intense, processed blasts of fragmenting detritus occupy the forefront. I suppose Imminent Starvation's NORD album is a fair reference point, although the Gridlock sound is thankfully more 3-dimensional (lots of reverberant space, panning and so forth) and blissfully ignorant of the "distortion for distortion's sake" credo of the so-called Power Noise Movement. {Interestingly, on 'Estrella', an ethereal female vocalist appears -- she's merely another layer betwixt the somber strings and mechanical breaks, however.} Overall, this disc leaves me with a satisfying, orchestral aftertaste. The obligatory remix that finishes things off is by a fellow called Vcam and sounds like it might be the unreleased fifth track from Autechre's ENVANE ep. Really. And that's a compliment.

More good things to come from these guys, I'm certain. Essential listening for any and all Biosphere fanatics. I have a feeling that the Ae crowd (esp. those who long to revisit the TRI REPETAE era) would enjoy this, as well.

In their interview with Outburn magazine, the artists recalled the near loss of the recording during a studio fire, severing the array of cables that tethered the computer containing it with whatever sharp objects they could get their hands on.

Had they not rescued the computer from the blazing studio, the world would be absent one of the best ambient industrial albums made to date.

Apart from the characteristic aliasing on some of the drum samples imposed by FastTracker II, this is a stylistic masterpiece. I come back to listen to this album any time I need to block out sound while at work and transport myself to a space where I can think.

I have over 35,000 albums of music in my personal collection, and this is in the top 1%.