VARIOUS ARTISTS
I like to
listen – thinner records #50
CD-R, thinner
Netlabels are a rather recent development and I am afraid one that is
destined to stay on a small level forever, due to the economical
restrictions connected with presenting but not selling music. But a great
idea, nonetheless. It is true, in our time and age almost everyone is able
to produce music and will also find a site or place to present the music
produced, and unfortunately almost everyone really does so. Which makes the
internet a frustrating and complicated jungle to look for music. People
really need someone to select and evaluate for them, to suggest and to help
– very much like going to a specialised shop to buy something, if you have
some serious questions or resentments against the product, but to alleviate
those troubles you are also willing to pay a (slightly) higher price that at
some store, where there is no service at all. Netlabels, obviously, only do
the selecting (the user has to download the songs and cover and produce the
CD’s himself, a completely new explanation to the slogan Do-It-Yourself.
“Hey, you do it yourself!”) and the workforce and webspace is paid for
by the owners of the label, who see their enterprise as a hobby mainly, I
guess, and probably also a cheap way to get to know a lot of cool music.
Right on.
Thinner says of themselves, that they are one of the more solid and
important netlabels. I can’t say, because I really never had that much
time to surf on the internet, looking for music, but one thing is definitely
true: it is a label with a unique and specialised taste and style and on the
current compilation “I like to listen” they show off their taste and the
label-rooster as a celebration to the 50th release on Thinner
records. So, if you have been looking for electronic music somewhere between
dub and minimal house, with straight grooves and basslines, uncompromising
and lush keyboard-sounds and effects, or everything between club-sounds and
electro, Thinner is definitely your place to spend some time. If you play
this compilation loud, you’ll get a cool and relaxed dancefloor going. Not
exactly setting the roof on fire, but a mature form of grooving dance that
will last through the whole night. If you play the CD on a lower volume,
you’ll get even more relaxed and laidback lounge-grooves that are as deep
and soft as your favourite cushioned sofa. The perfect sound to accompany a
lonely evening reading a book or to kill the emptiness in every dinner
party. All of the tracks presented work on small changes of sound and
atmosphere, or rather, on the evolution of a certain sound, and not at all
at hectic changes and rapid breakbeats. For this reason, the music might
seem a little exchangeable and unrevolutionary, or even boring when
listening to it only half-heartedly (which is, why it is perfectly suited
for any cocktail-party), but actually this turns out to be quite untrue when
really getting into the grooves with both ears and at least two thirds of
your heart. On the other hand, that is true for the whole genre of dub to
minimal house – that people, who don’t like it, will find it boring, and
those, who do like it, will find it great – so there we go. Let’s skip
the subject.
