One of the Greatest Albums of All Time

Acen - 75 Minutes

Comments: The link I used is the product page on amazon where people have left reviews for this album, using words like "brain-shattering", "undescribable", "maddening", and "the stuff that memories are made of". I might add some words of my own, namely: brilliant, masterful, heart wrenching. Acen uses raw breakbeat energy and psychadelic hypnotics to build intricate kalediscopes of rhythm and ellicit dreams and wonderment. It is almost like candy to the ears, giving one the same feeling as a child in a candystore. He combines the right textures and interlayered movements of sound that it makes the events within the music swirl in and out, before it whizes by your ears and disappears again.

His sound is characterized by b-boy tactics a la b-boy samples and roughneck breaks, deep piano chords and breaks, intersparsed by moments of ambience and reflection. Acen casually carries you up and down the bpm ladder, steadily climbing higher as the beats gain momentum, the textures become increasingly rich and etheral--pulling you in and out, and as soon as the final piece completes the intricate puzzle he flips the beat upsidedown, spilling you out into an open space freefall headed for rockbottom basslines. Booyaka.......

75 Minutes was produced in the early 90s when tact and skill were used to propel electronic music well beyond its technological capibilities. When 75 Minutes was released, electronic music was changing, techno was changing, breakbeats were changing, and this release is almost like a timecapsule capturing a movement within music genres, which soon afterward completely morphed into a brand new form of music called jungle, and later drum and bass. Indeed, I love the balance of starry eyed dreamscapes of the older ilk and new school b-boy devotion that binds this album together. 75 minutes is a masterpiece. It is utterly beautiful.