Search - Audiofly :: Undulation 2

Excellent Replay Value

Rohan Narine | Queens, New York | 05/07/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When purchasing anything in the audio/movie industry, I feel that it is important your selections have inherent replay value. A movie such as Memento is an example that has serious replay value, since it stirs controversy, debate, and makes one want to see it over and over again. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is another example, for the storytelling is legendary and the bond you create with the characters ties you to watching the movie whether you see it on cable or on DVD.



This brings me to the latest crop of progressive house music. Many titles in this current era are striving to not only become expertly constructed sets, but also retain the replay value of Tony De Vit's Global Underground discs, or BT's earlier work which still stand the test of time (to name two). Audiofly's Undulation 2, courtesy of SAW Recordings, is a house disc that stands the test of replay value. A disc that does not, for comparison, would be Victor Calderone's Evolve, his latest mix compilation. While it is representative of his nights (mornings) at Crobar in New York City, it is hard to place many peak time tracks on one disc and program them perfectly to ensure that your fans will have a disc that they can pop into their car and not bounce around from track to track. For a disc to have excellent replay value, it must have one key ingredient, cohesiveness. Sasha's Involver contained this ingredient, and it stood out as a great mix cd while holding the head of progressive house high. Audiofly's one disc foray into mix cd territory is a successful cohesive mix which steadily builds from tracks 9 to 13, only to realize that once it's over you want to listen to how it started. You don't get that feeling with other discs, mainly because Audiofly starts their disc off with a really great first track, and then you slip into the next and the next, and so on. As mentioned in the disc's notes, they utilized Ableton Live for the construction of the disc, and although they mention that they didn't use any effects from the program, I do think that they did (listen to the end of track 9).

At the end of the disc, they don't end with a track fitting the end of a house mix. For a perfect end to a house mix, listen to Renaissance Series Part 9, last track, disc two. Now that's a final track! In Undulation 2, the last track only seems as a beginning to something more, to a night that's only begun, or a hint of what's to come from this duo in the future.



(p.s. one of the only discs where you can listen to the entire disc straight through, similar to Digweed's Transitions discs, and Sasha's Involver.)

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