Glowstyx
Class Of 1992

THE REVIEW

Nostalgia? Spirit of rediscovery? Indissoluble bonds with traditions? A desire to bring dormant memories to the surface? Revival? Blessed youth? Dissatisfaction with the present? Fun? Many hypotheses can be made when faced with albums that clearly look to the past and attempt to bring to light sounds that, if not entirely forgotten, were certainly buried under successive layers of earth, or at least dust. While this process of moving backward is often applied to musical forms that can be generically defined as "rock", sometimes even electronic material gets translated back in time; specifically in the case of Glowstyx, as hinted by the title, the return is to 1992 (and nearby zones). Noting that behind this new entity is Jason Köhnen, (the supreme mind that governs the remarkable Bong-Ra), the twelve tracks revive the sound that animated the less mainstream dance floors or directly the fields where rave participants gathered. So we're talking about dancable music, often derived from techno (with rare ventures into trance territories), both in its more linear form and with broken rhythmic support, occasional acidic house excursions, and no gabba or particularly violent concessions. Indeed, the appeal is quite joyful and aimed at fun, rather than massacre, but the whole comes across as too deliberately dated, as well as excessively simple, and it doesn't always manage to convince.