Smoked Out

Alex Smoke is a man after my heart: he loves coffee and hates messy drunks and we also agree on global politics, although my outlook is perhaps less pessimistic than his. His new album, ‘Paradolia’ is bloody good too: Alex has narrowed his vision and this mixture of Detroit soul and twiddly, fiddly offbeat linear funk that he usually releases on Vakant is impressive. There’s also a neat classical piece on the album and  Never Want To See You Again ,a muffled vocal track that’s just as melancholic and catchy as ‘Don’t See The Point’. Don’t get me wrong though, there’s loads of razor sharp dance floor tracks on ‘Paradolia’ too, including ‘Persona’ and the recent single, Meany  , although I prefer the original version to Matt John’s rework. The other cool thing about this album is that Alex has promised to give all the money he makes - we don’t know what Soma’s plans are – to the Oxfam, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth charities. It’s a nice move and, along with new track ‘We Like It Insipid’, makes Alex one of the few politicised techno producers around. What a pity more people can’t behave in the same way

Comments

[desy balmer]

Hi Richard;

I am sure you will be pleased to hear that ALEX SMOKE is to play his first Irish gig on Friday 1st December at Radio City. It is the fourth Nice&Nasty/Soma party in Dublin (before that Percy X and Marco Bernardi do Radio City on Sat28thOct). Anyway, Alex D Menzies aka Ales Smoke will be playing with me, t-polar and jim hutchison at radio city on fri1stdec whilst in isaac butts the space djz will be going mental with dex and fx and shit. hope you can support it.