Kris Menace – ‘Electronic Horizon’ (Compuphonic)

Despite originating from Germany Kris Menace’s music has more of a French edge to it, steering clear of hard metronomic techno or new wave acid of his Countrymen, Menace has spent several years making funky electro on his Work it baby imprint alongside Parisian peers such as Alan Braxe and Lifelike.

Fred Falke, also from Germany now residing in France is a likely musical bedfellow considering the type of music they both produce. Where Falke failed on his recently released debut album was that the tunes sounded old, parodies of the music he was making a decade ago, and to a lesser extent fellow Frenchie SebastIAN with his debut long player ‘Total’ also suffered from a lack of progression.  We became familiar with the sound and expected something different but didn’t get it, Menace avoids this by making several subtle but significant tweaks to his sound without reinventing himself.

After the punishing three CD 2009 debut ‘Idiosyncrasis’, we’re thankfully down to a regular twelver tracker this time. It’s less frenetic and aimed more at home stereos than dancefloor rip ups. Taking on a dark early 1990s trance sound similar to the German label Superstiton, Menace applies this effectively to mid-tempo house beats. The melancholic synth lines on opener ‘Falling Star’ are instant and hypnotic, the emotional instrumentation is continued on the sublime ‘Efeel’ while ‘Fly me to the moon’ is dramatic space disco at its best.

The tracks in general are all killers but in the context of an album it starts to feel a bit samey on the latter half, maybe the album would have benefitted from being continually sequenced especially as it actually plays like a dj mix or live set if you ignore the gaps. This is a minor gripe,  when you have tracks like ‘We Are’ sounding like Visage’s ‘Fade to Grey’ mixed by Giorgio Moroder, who cares? 8/10
Chris Todd