Review Summary: at least they tried.
Say what you will about Deadmau5, but Joel Zimmerman has made quite the impact on the electronic scene with his unique style of progressive/deep house. He has made such an impact, in fact, that there have been those who have attempted to imitate his style, and are already being influenced by his work. His art isn’t completely original, but he takes progressive house music, spins it around, and makes it fairly interesting – it is a breath of fresh air in the house scene. With Joel’s success, it is no wonder why some electronic artists would want to jump on the same boat. Unfortunately, Deadmau5’s musical success is nearly untouchable considering the blandness of oh so many house artists. Sometimes we just have to take what we’re given.
In
The Gazelle and The Lion, the electronic group from Berlin, Germany, give us their spin on Deadmau5’s success. With boisterous beats the entire length of the EP, they certainly have a thing for the deep part of house music, but what else do they have? Basically, they do everything that Deadmau5 does, except not as exceptionally, although in fairness it is difficult to reach the heights of
For Lack of a Better Name. They have the progressive elements here with both tracks getting progressively fuller with sounds stacked on top of each other, and that’s pretty much how the EP plays out. The unfortunate aspect of this is that there are only two songs in the EP, and only ‘The Lion’ is worth taking the time to listen to. ‘The Gazelle’, although technically proficient, gets nowhere real fast. Everything is focused on one synthline, but that synthline is extremely boring, and making the track longer than necessary to compensate doesn’t help at all.
‘The Lion’ basically continues the same progressive style, but this time it actually works. Not only does it get a bit exciting as the blaring sounds build up with time, but it stays interesting the entire time. This is due in part to the psychedelic freak outs which claim prominent spots in the song. Synths go ballistic as they speed up, echo, change pitch, etc., and these spacy sections, although seeming somewhat pointless, keep the listener engaged. The main synthline of the song is also quite good (unlike the first song) despite its simplicity. In short, ‘The Lion’ is what ‘The Gazelle’ tried to sound like but failed. Ultimately, ‘The Lion’ is the only decent song here, so one has to wonder why the group bothered putting out this minuscule EP in the first place. Weird.
