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Album Reviews
Album Review: Phil Kieran – Shh (Cocoon Records)
By Paul Vig | Published on Tuesday 27 October 2009
Cocoon is owned by technomeister Sven Vath, while Phil Kieran has been DJing techno for some time, so no prizes for guessing where this is heading. Ulsterman Kieran has notched up many 12″ releases over the years, but it’s the artist album that really tests producers in this domain. With ‘Shh’, it’s debatable whether Kieran has passed the test.
After easing us in with ‘Cut Copy Waste’, he fires things up nicely with the moody ‘Playing With Shadows’ and the rough beats and angry mech sounds of ‘Dirt’. It’s a good start. But then he lets himself down with the grating siren samples on ‘RESP’, while the odd noodling of ‘Bend It’ is just a waste of disc space.
By far the best track on the album is ‘Don’t Look Far Away’, which is more downtempo than much of the rest of the tracks on offer and reminds me of techno days gone by. Elsewhere, ‘Never Ending Mountain’ is the most accessible track, and brings things to a close well.
Overall, I don’t think ‘Shh’ is all that great. It does sum up a lot of Kieran’s influences, and a few ideas work OK. But some really don’t. PV
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