Blooming Delight

Someone needs to tell my why "Stoppage Time" by Guy Gerber isn't the greatest song of 2004. The only reason I could think of is because WOW's "Don't Forget Me", "Killa" and (most of all) "Melt" all came out in the same year. But damn! This Gerber fella's kicking my ass!

I had it wrong in the Nick Warren post; the song that smoked the evening was in fact "Stoppage Time", not "Glimmer of Dope". I new it was the last track on one of my zillions of mix comp's, but didn't realize it was the final on disc 1 of "Bloom" by Gabriel & Dresden, rather than Nick's exceptionally trippy and typically wide-ranging tour-de-force, "Reykjavic GU 24" (and yes, I'm conscious of the ruination I'm wreaking with my spelling of that fine city's name. Tell you what: when I've visited it, I'll begin spelling it properly (and that's a promise)).

So, while Stoppage Time rips through my brain for the third time in a row (I'll listen to the rest of this disc again, eventually), I'll tell you a little more about the disc. There are several points in Stoppage Time where the beat pauses and the ambient/echo portions of the track are allowed to just... build. And keep on building; it's almost as though they're delayed just a tad beyond what an ordinary listener would consider reasonable, and then the beats/track are brought back in, instantly blowing the lid off any dancefloor, living room, car, *mind*!!! I can't get enough of this.

Well, if you're looking for the disc that will keep you satisfied for awhile, Bloom is probably it. G&D have done an interesting thing here, interspersing their own new original material and a few of their remixes of third-party stuff with other tracks with which they have no involvement, creating what's at once both an exemplary mix cd and a great showcase of their own originals. Nice things abound: track selection is very strong, including on disc 2 the highlight G&D remix of Dido's "Don't Leave Home". I've never heard the original mix of this track, and if it is to G&D's remix what the original of "Dirty Sticky Floors" is to Junkie XL's masterpiece remix thereof, I'm not sure I ever need to! In addition to excellent tracks, the sequencing is really well done. They begin with what is probably the ultimate "compressor heavily ducking the reverb being keyed by the kick drum" track, "Arcadia", followed by a few other originals, including one called "Lament" that really goes into some wonderful moodiness and atmospherics. The first disc continues its build, pausing for the refreshment of Andain's wonderfully pure voice at about the 33% point of the side. Side one finishes with the consciousness-demolishing nirvanic bliss of Stoppage Time.

Side two picks up the pace with a different attitude, kicking it off with "Voices", a vocal-sample stack reminiscent of 80's records buy guys with access to a Fairlight CMI that blows into some powerful, pounding 4-on-the-floor boogie, leading into the aforementioned Dido remix, serving as the side's centerpiece. They pull out a few more stops to bring the disc to a nice, solid conclusion, which fades into an acoustic guitar and voice version of "Imagination" by Motorcycle. Nice stuff altogether.