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BEN WATT - BUZZIN' FLY VOL. 3 (BUZZIN' FLY) |
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I don’t know why, but I’ve been trying really hard not to have mixed feelings about this CD. The promise of its opening is big, a lush trippy spoken word rap floating over ethereal electronic waverings. Actually, for turning me on to Fairmont (the artist of the intro loop and track 3), this CD gets another star. But then.... for the most part, it plays like a really good house music CD. A bit too much repetition of the same thing - and I have six hundred or so of those already. Now for those of you who didn’t realize, Ben Watt is not only the DJ behind the Buzzin Fly nights at the London club The End Up, from which this series gets its name, but also one of the original brilliant talents in Everything But The Girl. So we’re reckoning with an estimable musical prowess here. Which is another reason why I’ve sat for weeks with this CD, returning to it to see if more of its appeal would appear to me in a different setting or when I was in a different mood. I appreciate he’s added some trendy electro and minimalist elements to his signature Buzzin Fly deep house, but it does make the mix from Track 3 going into track 4 a bit rough! Not that he’d ever train wreck or anything, but invisible deep house mixing this is not. Once that’s out of the way though, its smooth sailing. A bit too smooth? The better moments are when flowing spoken word lyrics – like on “Attack Attack Attack” or the old school sample on “I Love Deep” - interjects some life into that too familiar 4/4 beat, swirling synths, and echoing female vocal repeating over and over. Actually, there’s another early 90s flashback earlier on too, the dirty bass pulsing out its binary code on “Lose Control.” I feel like if I could just surrender to imagining this actually playing in a perfectly packed club, on a kickin’ sound system.... that’s it. Now I’m feeling it. It doesn’t do well in my living room, headphone, or even the pumpin Funktion-esque Sound System I have in my car. It winds down with the minimalist Lephtee, and then finishes out with a lounge-y beatless rainfall and soft spoken word assembly, which I absolutely loved. That’s it, Ben Watt won me over. Take some time with this CD and see if he doesn’t do it to your ears too.-- review by Jennifer Warner
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