Speedy J - !ive FLAC download

Wow... Five people actually rated this great album down to a two? Incredible. Oh well, at least nobody rated it down to a one yet.

This 1995 live act recording courtesy of electronic music maestro Speedy J is just so warm and cosy you cannot help yourself but wonder why was it a one time treat only? He could have comfortably sold live sets and make a fortune of it. But my guess is that the fact this is the only CD release of the man live I own, "!ive" comes across even greater than it could have been. It contains some of his finest tracks ever, such as Pepper, The Oil Zone, Symmetry and the remix of Sven Vath's Ballet-Fusion, all blended in a perfectly harmonic mix. Very melodic and groovy, with an accessible and heart warming attitude, not afraid to flert with more than one genre/style at a time, and despite of never really climaxing and reaching an acoustic explosion to set dance floors on fire, it is obviously a work of a guy who knows his stuff. Plain and simple: the guy just drops trance inducing tunes one after the other as though he was a musical slot machine. Flows just perfectly, Speedy J really pitched it at a pace that your mind shall willingly drift off with the music. And it never gets boring or repetitive despite staying within a constant and steady pace range at which it rolls along throughout. Easily as good as his "G-spot" album!

This live set is incredible, especially given the technology they had in 94/95. It is quite artistic where sequencing is concerned, and starts with a looong ambient passage that slowly builds the pressure. From there, we basically drop into more powerful versions of his dancefloor tunes of the era. A really nice blend of intelligent Techno and Trance. Once the dancefloor burning is done, he has the guts to segue into a straight-up IDM section before finishing things off on another dancefloor number. The transitions are also quite nice, maintaining momentum throughout. Apparently he got his pseudonym as the result of being a technical whiz on the decks. This set (assuming it was performed as live as it could be for the time) shows that he was also quite advanced as a live act. Truly a perfect encapsulation of Speedy J at the peak of this phase in his career. If you like this stuff, check out Apparat and his various projects.