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Album Reviews
Album review: System 7 – Up (A-Wave Records)
By Marc Samuels | Published on Wednesday 20 April 2011
Emerging 20 years ago as a product of a burgeoning rave culture, System 7 almost feel a like relic from a bygone era, but this album finds them to be in rude health.
Inspired by the current Berlin techno scene, the duo (Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy) have delivered a consistently up-tempo but never one-dimensional set of tracks layered with hypnotic sounds and fluid melodicism. Opening track ‘Positive Noise’, one of two collaborations with acid house pioneer A Guy Called Gerald, does float by on a bassline seemingly lifted from Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s Alright’, but with its ascendant euphoria and Hillage’s trademark dreamy guitars, it’s a fine statement of intent.
‘E-Fusion’ and ‘Dolphin Smack’ are simply classic System 7, with their perfect fusion of dreamy mellifluous guitars and pulsing house beats, whilst the adrenalised ‘The Mind Boggles’ feels like a suitably turbo-charged alternative soundtrack to ‘Bladerunner’. Only ‘Funky Gong’ feels misjudged (the grungy guitars feeling out of place amid the crystalline futurism), but for the most part this is a fine dance album. MS
Physical release: 30 May
