Articles
Roger O'Donnell
Morgan Packard

Albums
The Ace of Clubs
akido
Cenotype
Cyrus
Mathias Delplanque
Entia Non
Michael Fakesch
False
Forrest
Kraig Grady
Kiln
Kingfisherg
Low in the Sky
Payton MacDonald
Manitou
Martin & Machinefabriek
Mt. Fuji Doom. Corporation
Need More Sources
Nobile
Odd Nosdam
Ontayso
Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells
RF & Lili De La Mora
Schmickler / Chisholm
The Sea
Seabear
Valgeir Sigurðsson
Silvania
Six Twilights
Aaron Spectre
Stamen & Pistils
Swayzak
Tijuana M. A. Broad. Inc.
Utom Alla
Pete Warren
Yaporigami

Compilations / Mixes
Box of Dub
Expanse at Low Levels
Ibiza – Renaissance Vol. 4
Jahtarian Dubbers Vol. 1
The Silence Was Warm

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
Abiku / Kid Camaro
Audio Injection
B12
Bering & Simko
Bury the Sound
The Caribbean
DJ C feat. Zulu
Entia Non
Flavius E
Andre Gardeja
Lerosa
Magnum 38
Microthol
Ontayso
Troy Pierce
Ghislain Poirier
Rusuden
Skoozbot
Slap [unmodified]
Sonmi451
Joel Tammik
TG

The Ace of Clubs: Benefist
Firstcask

In which Luke Francis Vibert exhumes the five-year-old alias The Ace Of Clubs for a seventy-five-minute workout of squiggly acid-house. All fifteen tracks are fine enough but, with all due respect to Mr. Vibert, they're also the kind of thing he can do in his sleep at this stage—which makes me wonder why he doesn't challenge himself to do something a little more innovative, especially when past releases under the Plug and Wagon Christ aliases show he's eminently capable of doing so. Yes, some tunes do distinguish themselves as above-average exemplars of the genre: “Classid” and “Ecid” add nice backbeat funk to their slippery drum machine snares and gobbling acid mayhem, and “Whorcan” and “Patriotic Acid” swing with a jazzy breeziness and syncopated élan, respectively. “Pheel The Phorce” also mixes it up by adding a hip-hop vibe to its grinding, cymbal-heavy flow, while “Fruitacid” adds soulful shout-outs to its tight groove. Yet the feeling remains that Vibert's spinning his wheels here by cranking out assembly-line tracks that don't hold a candle to wildly imaginative material like Tally Ho!'s “Shimmering Haze” and Drum'n'Bass for Papa's “Me & Mr Jones.”

August 2007