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Tasty. One half of Tegma (Omar, presumably not the one who recorded There's Nothing Like This, but I prepare to stand corrected) has hit some sort of nail quite firmly on the head with this release. In a world of progressive without balls, it's somewhat life-affirming to hear something that has an abundance of testicular oomph.
Those images out of the way, and we can listen to the album. The vibe throughout is tight, and there's a lot of fluidity. By "fluidity", the tracks themselves contain -- shock horror -- changes!! None of this progressive stuff that is audio-linguistically anything but. You get more than the introduction of a theme which is teased and prodded for seven minutes. As such, listener engagement is higher and -- shock horror again -- there's something tangible there that you can dance to, something tokeep you focused and something to lock onto rather than wandering your attention round and wondering if you can standon top of that hill over there to get mobile reception and update your facebook.
At its creamy best, Unleashed is masterful. Too Deep In Bleep has an incrediblt drop-in that'll satisfy even the most adrent progressive "nah"-sayers, the moody rhythm section of Babylon will keep a dancefloor tight and focused so that your mate can dart through and nick wallets out of back pockets, and the tight progression throughout the fully epic Untamed is textbook stuff.
Top of the heap -- and biggest carrots-on-a-rope for the Beatport cherry-pickers -- would have to be the two-part Shadows. Two loosely-themed tracks that show off the two sides of Solid Snake: the melodic, sensible and fluid side, and the more stripped-down minimal side. Both strands weep quality, both are wonderful and the sum total of listening to Shadows' double-helix back to back is one of the most rewarding musical experiences available to you at the present time.
All in all, I have to admit this was pretty ace. It's been another high-rotation disc around these parts, which is increasingly rare for anything in the progressive subgenre. One wonders, somewhat dreamily, whether there is among the producers just as there is among the listeners, a growing boredom factor with a lot of proggy music. But whatever, the concept of a proggy daytime dancefloor might be a little more exciting in months to come.
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