1st Best of CD review

4 out of 5 stars!!!

Published today on www.musician.ie

Digital Dreams - The Very Best Of

This CD is a potted history of the musical career of Thomas “TJ” Janak from 1988 to 1996, with some new bonus tracks bolted on. It’s an electro pop production containing 18 tracks and spanning the entire lifecycle of the Digital Dreams project. The albums themselves had top 10 success in the DRMV charts. TJ notes on the sleeve that there are some quality issues with some of the songs, and made the decision not to re-master so as to keep the authentic sound of the original tracks. I’ll mention a little about the recording of the tracks on the album later.

The album itself is beautifully presented, with a collage of press cutting adorning the insert and a proper full-size jewel case.

Vesicula opens the album, with a driving rhythm and hints of the riff from the Knight Rider T.V. show. There is some German spoken word on the track, which I was completely unable to decipher, so I’m sure I didn’t get the full effect of the song. The whole track is based on a descending four chord pattern, but there is enough variation in the arrangement to keep it from getting stale.

“Der Teufel” is a hoot – Imagine Kraftwerk covering the Shamen’s “Ebeneezer Goode” after ingesting some very strong hallucinogens. “Ich bin Der Teufel” (“I am The Devil”), TJ cackles manically over a burbling techno arp line, with satanic synth choirs belting out in the background. Musically, it is a little sparse, but it is a very interesting experimental piece. I only wish I understood more of the dialogue.

Murder Mystery samples the narrative from a Sherlock Holmes interactive DVD – I hope he got clearance for the samples!

Free Your Mind is possibly the most overtly commercial track on the album. A stop-start arrangement utilises some luscious pads and bell sounds in the slow sections which contrast with the hardcore beats and super saw lead of the up-tempo section. TJ struggles with the vocal line here, and I’d have pictured a female vocal smothered in reverb to mesh with the music.

Take Me Higher sees Digital Dreams carving a typical slice of 90s euro pop, in the mode of Army of Lovers, and is again very commercial. The male and female vocals overpower the music a little, and the male and female tracks aren’t always exactly in sync, but the arrangement is satisfying and it would have been quite at home in the charts of the early to mid 90s.

Heaven is TJ’s take on the Robert Miles sound, complete with the offbeat bass and the piano melody. He uses a phasey modulation on the drum track to create movement, and this takes me back to happy times in the chill out room of my favourite club in the early 90s.

Con Course Theme is an ambitious attempt at a movie soundtrack which then segues into a rhythm which is almost Bollywood-esque, and then the track morphs to a 140bpm dance track. Remarkably the track never feels schizophrenic and the metamorphosis of the track is very fluid. It’s got the big string sections, solo woodwinds and explosions of timpanis. The solo instruments reveal their synthetic origin, but in general the track is very well implemented, and possibly my favourite on the album.

Stylistically and sonically, the album meanders quite a bit, from the experimental outtakes like Hi-tech Hero (a hip-hop idea complete with funky drummer loop and that Insane in the Membrane sample) to Dicke Backe (a techno track with some sort of circus music as a melody, which made my ears bleed). It’s a good retrospective of the sonic palette of dance music in the 90s. Much of the material is a little light in the high frequencies, in an audio-cassette kind of way. Perhaps some of it was recorded on an 8-track? I decided to investigate, and asked TJ to explain the process behind the recording.

It turns out that the earliest Digital Dreams release was recorded from a Korg M-1 and Commodore Amiga straight to 4-track. I’m betting these are the tracks lacking in high end. After that, the project upgraded to 8-track recording before graduating to using professional studios. These days TJ is primarily using analog synths and recording them to a dedicated 12-track digital recorder, using a PC only for the mastering stage.

It will be interesting to see where the next album takes TJ. I would like to see him collaborate with a female vocalist. Coincidentally, when I browsed my way to http://www.myspace.com/digitaldreams2008 to check out his online presence, it appears he has teamed up with Caitriona Moran, who appears (I assume) on a track featured there called “Can’t Help Myself”. She has a great soulful voice and is the perfect foil to TJ’s understated musical accompaniment. More of this please!

It would also be interesting to see where he could go if he added some guitars to the equation. As a member of the small but elite club of hardware synth aficionados, he’s probably aghast at the idea!

Squibs, www.musician.ie
The review will also be up on www.wusikmagazine.com shortly.