MAGIC SOUND FABRIC

Uplift Drift

Spiralight Recordings (2002)

reviewed by Bill Binkelman

Uplift Drift is a solid collection of chill/dub-style ambient tracks, courtesy of Cameron Akhunaton, who records as Magic Sound Fabric. Fans of earlier Waveform compilations (such as the A.D. series) will find a lot on this album to enjoy, I suspect. The music has that same highly polished sound with lots of breezy synths, kinetic beats (both electronic and organic in nature), sexy melodies and sensuous rhythms, all of it superbly engineered and mastered to produce an energetic brand of chillus maximus. While not a truly "relaxing" style of chill-out music, Uplift Drift is still plenty laid back in spots and never gets hyperkinetic in its rhythms.

Track titles give an indication of the futuristic slant to the synthesizers employed by Akhunaton. "Levitation Groove" starts the party out with snazzy jazzy synth horns, earthy hand drums, and finger-popping snares and high hats. The nine-minute long "Photonic Phonic" opens with a juxtaposition of crickets (!) with Berlin-esque laser synths, before the beats (reminiscent of artists like A Positive Life and Pentatonik) and silky synth strings carry you off on a cushion of cyberspace tuneage.

The remaining seven tracks all offer something to recommend them, in varying degrees. As I stated above, Akhunaton knows how to expertly layer his keyboards and rhythm tracks and he delivers a ton of dancy, semi-trancy, always groovy ear candy throughout Uplift Drift. I dug the opening scratch beats and later hip hop rhythms on "Astro Dream Stream" played out against a backdrop disco-fied guitar licks and ethereal synth notes. Admittedly, not everything was a big hit with me, though. I wasn't overly fond of "My Thoughts Have Become Visible" even with its cool tribal hand percussion elements and mysterious echoed piano - it was a little too much of an island jam-track for me, with lots of synth horn work. But kicky cuts like "Dimension Shift" featuring blooping/bleeping synth effects, downtempo snare beats and cyber-jazzy piano and lush strings picked me right back up again.

I don't know if this is Magic Sound Fabric's (Akhunaton's) first effort. If it is, it's an amazingly strong debut. Uplift Drift is a confident and accomplished recording of beat-driven electronic ambient music. While the music is a little too revved up at times to be labeled as 100% chill-out (as I view it), it may just be a matter of semantics (one man's chill is another's dance music, so to speak). The album is a lot better than some recent efforts from Waveform (I think it's also better than any of the A.D. compilations, which have not dated well, in my opinion). If you liked those CDs and are looking for the next step in dub-style ambient music with a degree of chill to it, Magic Sound Fabric has just what the music doctor ordered. Recommended.