Freestyle review: Host - Andrew Gardiner

Host
Host
Dysgenic Records CDr 2001

Andrew Gardiner
The Ear And Quill
Dysgenic Records CDr 1999

Dysgenic is a fairly obscure label, I didn't know about them until a few weeks ago when I accidentally stumbled upon their website and discovered some pretty good music. This review is about two albums in particular that caught my attention.

First up is the untitled album by Host.
Bombastic downtempo breakbeats with clear melodies and female vocals adding a touch of melancholia form time to time. That's the recipe for all tracks on here. As such creating a haunting, dark atmosphere. The blunted, organic production makes it sound kind of like those 60s deep-funk tracks, thereby highly increasing the smokeyness factor. Things like this are rarely heard, except maybe on some of Money Mark's releases.
Thirtheen ultra-short tracks in total just under 23 minutes, this album is over before you know it, but on the other hand doesn't bore you on repeated listenings.

Second is Andrew Gardiner's The Ear And Quill.
It mainly consists of chill-out tracks (some jazzy, some ambient, some electronica) plus a few quite harsh drum' n bass influenced tracks. Now these rougher tracks don't really appeal to me and they kind of prevent the album of having a continuous flow, but on the contrary the chill-out tracks themselves are terrific! The choice tracks definitely are Poppyprintlax, together with Kleen, Brooke and Softly.
Somehow reminiscent of those early nineties ambient-trance tracks with these neat melodies and weird voices, yet at the same time clearly affected by todays quirky electronica. Very nice.

Say Vegin
dec 2002