1 What Is This? Womack 2:36
George Lynch departed the Dokken reunion following 1997's Shadowlife, handing the reins over to ex-Winger guitarist Reb Beach. Beach has more than enough chops to fill Lynch's shoes, and although he brings his own musical personality to the riffs and solos, the songs' melodies are still recognizably Dokken. Unfortunately, those melodies are typical of post-reunion Dokken more often than not, with the band seemingly struggling to come up with the big chorus hook and just not quite getting there (a problem, come to think of it, that sometimes plagued the band in their heyday as well). Although Beach acquits himself well, the songwriting ultimately sinks the record; besides, at this stage of the game, it's difficult to believe Don Dokken when he sings "I must confess, I'm the maddest hatter of them all." Erase the Slate is workmanlike retro-'80s hard rock at its best, and thoroughly unmemorable at its worst.
Based in Berlin, Germany, the 17 Hippies started off in 1995 as a trio playing the otherwise unlikely mix of Cajun and Baroque music. Gradually, they expanded their line-up and eventually ended up as an orchestra consisting of twenty, sometimes even thirty musicians. Coming from different backgrounds like rock, jazz and classical music, the band members assimilated virtually any musical style available and blended all of this into their own unique sound. Thus, they feel equally at home whether playing at boisterous wedding parties or in the chamber music room. Appearances at the renown SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in 1998 or the simultaneous release of CDs in French, German and Italian in the respective countries in 1999 all contributed to the growing global reputation of this ensemble of world citizens. The band also pursued other projects such as the release of a book of music for children (1999) and the soundtrack for the Andreas Dresen movie Halbe Treppe (English title: Grillpoint) (2002) which won a prize at the 2002 Berlinale, the renown Berlin film festival, and is one of the highlights of post-reunification German cinema.
At the beginning of the '90s, teen currency shifted from bubblegum'n'Tiger Beat to grunge'n'Maximum Rock & Roll. Although it may have been pushed from the spotlight, teen pop hadn't died — it, in a way, went underground, spending time on the fringes of pop culture. One of the leading lights of the exiled teen brigade was The New Mickey Mouse Club. For several years, it toiled away on the Disney Network, earning a small fan base — but, more importantly, providing a launchpad for several careers, including that of Britney Spears. Like her fellow NMMC alumni *N Sync, Spears shot to stardom in the late '90s, just as she was on the verge of late adolescence. By that time, everything old was new again. Albums like her debut, ...Baby One More Time, were topping the charts as if they were Hangin' Tough, which is only appropriate since it sounded as if it could have been cut in 1989, not 1999. ...Baby One More Time has the same blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry that propelled the New Kids and Debbie Gibson, due to the Backstreet Boys' producer, Max Martin, who is also the mastermind behind Spears' debut. He has a knack for catchy hooks, endearing melodies, and engaging Euro-dance rhythms, all of which are best heard on the hits: the ingenious title track, "Sometimes," "(You Drive Me) Crazy," and the utterly delightful, bubblegum-ragga album track "Soda Pop." Like many teen pop albums, ...Baby One More Time has its share of well-crafted filler, but the singles, combined with Britney's burgeoning charisma, make this a pretty great piece of fluff.  | 1 |  | ...Baby One More Time | Martin | 3:30 | |||||
| | 2 | | (You Drive Me) Crazy | Elofsson, Krueger, Magnusson ... | 3:17 | |||||
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| 3 | | Sometimes | Elofsson | 4:05 | ||||||
| | 4 | | Soda Pop | Bassie, White | 3:20 | |||||
| 5 | | Born to Make You Happy | Carlsson, Lundin | 4:03 | ||||||
| | 6 | | From the Bottom of My Broken Heart | White | 5:11 | |||||
| 7 | | I Will Be There | Carlsson, Martin | 3:53 | ||||||
| 8 | | I Will Still Love You | White | 4:02 | ||||||
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| 9 | | Thinkin' About You | Bassie, White | 3:35 | ||||||
| 10 | | E-Mail My Heart | White | 3:41 | ||||||
| 11 | | The Beat Goes On | Bono | 3:43 | ||||||
From the traditionalist artwork on the cover to the intro (a hazy, spoken-word track reminiscent of Lee Hazlewood), listeners can easily be forgiven for expecting an electronica/rock crossover album on the order of Air or Groove Armada. Instead, Aim's Cold Water Music is a jazzy, beat-heavy project that's just a few steps removed from straight-ahead hip-hop. Producer Andy Turner, a self-confessed beathead, cycles between jazz-rap and alternative wall-of-sound influences to bedrock his productions. Turner also gets props for drafting three excellent rappers -- Q'n'C, YZ, and AG -- to add vocals, resulting in several tracks that evoke the heyday of rap's Golden Age, but are also tough enough to survive even on modern mainstream rap radio. Though half of the standard songs are vocal tracks, Turner also shines on the instrumentals, constructing a paranoid beat symphony on "Demonique" with shrieking strings and an extended vocal sample from some forgotten B-movie.| 1 | | Intro | 0:55 | |||||||
| | 2 | | Cold Water Music | Turner | 5:44 | |||||
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| | 3 | | The Force | Furgeson | 4:05 | |||||
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| 4 | | Sail | Gale | 5:14 | ||||||
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| 5 | | Downstate | Turner | 4:14 | ||||||
| 6 | | Ain't Got Time to Waste | Gale | 4:08 | ||||||
| 7 | | Fat City | Turner | 0:38 | ||||||
| 8 | | True to Hip Hop | Turner | 4:28 | ||||||
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| | 9 | | Demonique | Turner | 5:18 | |||||
| 10 | | A Tree, a Rock and a Cloud | Gale | 4:17 | ||||||
| 11 | | Journey to the End of the Night | Turner | 5:27 | ||||||
| 12 | | From Here to Fame | Turner | 5:29 | ||||||
Who says there's no good American drum and bass? We (a trio consisting of the eminent DJs Once 11, Olive and Loop) have changed all that. Now even the snobbiest hardcore, hardstep Anglocentric junglists have no excuse but to give the American drum scene its due: just about everything on We's second album gives the best of the U.K. crew a run for their money. Granted, Square Root of Minus One starts out weak, with the shapeless, beatless and tuneless drone of "Birimbau," but things pick up immediately with the frenetic breakbeats and kid vocal samples of "Diablos" and they basically never let up. Thrill to the slow and smoky "Caya's Kids," with its dubwise effects, to the cool ethnic percussion and backward bass on "You Gone?," and to the eerie electric piano and reggae-fied beat of "Hielo." Marvel almost as much to most everything else, too. Excellent.| 1 | | Birimbau | 3:48 | |||
| 2 | | 12_Diablos | 6:34 | |||
| 3 | | Caya's Kids | 5:29 | |||
| 4 | | Modulana | 3:45 | |||
| 5 | | Back and Forth | 6:38 | |||
| 6 | | Ririka | 7:13 | |||
| 7 | | Thonk | :58 | |||
| 8 | | El Mosquito | 6:25 | |||
| 9 | | 'You Gone? | 4:36 | |||
| 10 | | Hielo | 4:07 | |||
| 11 | | Protons | 6:05 | |||
| 12 | | Intimines | 4:01 | |||
| 13 | | 12_Diablos_Mix13 | 4:44 | |||
| 14 | | Uabmirib | 2:16 |
