Review Summary: After the first 30 seconds, you won't even know the headphones are on your head. The music feels like it's inside of you.
3 of 3 thought this review was well written Speedy J was one of the most diverse pioneers of IDM and techno music; ranging from his more pretty ambient/electro/techno releases like Ginger and G-Spot with pretty synthesizers and robotic drum beats to his more industrial/hardcore (but still kind of ambient) releases "A Shocking Hobby" and "Public Energy No 1" which feature darker synthesizers and more aggressive beats.
While those albums were quite fun, relaxing (Ginger and G-Spot, and some of Public Energy No 1 for the most part) and exciting, they DO NOT compare at all to this godly beast of an album "Loudboxer". This album is by far one of my favorite techno albums of all time and here's why,
Just to get one thing straight, this album has no melody what-so-ever. The only songs that even come close to having a keyboard sound (if you want to call it that) is Sevntrak, (Bihum), Pannik (Rmx), Stroker, and Reenter. Other then that, this album focuses primarily on the beats. As soon as the first song kicks in, the whole album will gobble you up and inhale you down it's dark and booming esophagus and into the stomach of production. The whole entire album sounds like one large song and it could potentially never end (I know what a DJ mix album is, but this is not a DJ mix album). The 4/4 techno beat starts up for the track Reenter and try to pay attention to it because the beat is what is really amazing about this album. In the background there are a whole bunch of odd little noises and beats that surround the 4/4 beat and to describe the sound would be like a bunch of cogs moving inside a ginormous clock. You hardly even notice that you're not listening to the same song because you're hypnotized in this state of awe by what you're eardrums are experiencing.
From tracks 1-6 they really encompass a very dark and brooding side to techno music, as the beat never tires and all of the little things like noises, cuts, clicks and whooshes that make each song come into place. During tracks 1-6 the beat makes all these twists and turns by having effects (like reverb and echo and filter) added to it and they sound fantastic as the album just keeps going and going.
The album takes a turn for the best when the interlude track 7 "Inter Zil" plays where the beat suddenly stops and a robotic female voice starts to talk about tones and how they interact. After the lady says this, probably the best moment in all of techno starts to occur as a different, harder hitting and faster beat plays starting the 8th track on the album Krekc. Then we return to the epic cycle of repetition and hypnotism as every other song after this one changes the beat from Krekc subtly and amazingly that it feels like you're evacuating from the stomach of the album to the small intestine and then large intestine. The best part is: you never get bored of it too. There is always something interesting coming up next that will grab your attention and you don't even realize you're bored because you're too hypnotized in the heavenly pounding rave sounds of Loudboxer.
This album was an extraordinary example of a perfect techno album. There is literally nothing I can say about this album that is bad. Every song was incredibly enjoyable. The production was fantastic and the music was amazing with every song hooking you in this awesome state (and to extended my metaphor of the anatomy of the album) and once you leave the large intestine and out the rectum, you wish you could just crawl back in for maybe... another hour.
