Davide Squillace this week blesses us with his new 3 track release ‘Goiânia’ released on Luciano’s Cadenza Music. The Italian veteran DJ and producer has been creating music for over 10 years, with releases and collaborations reading like a catalogue of the international minimal community.
All these very impressive accolades made this review even tougher to write, I thought long and hard about whether it was because it was a somewhat unfamiliar genre or whether it was down to personal taste, and after much conscious effort to remain completely impartial and objective as well as research to ensure I am not writing from a layman’s perspective, I still couldn’t find much I liked about this release.
I maintain as a rule of thumb that for minimal music to be successful it needs to have a certain quirk, a little offbeat motif or inventive tone that engages the listeners interest. Within this release, unfortunately, there are very few, and the ones that are there don’t really work.
The title track ‘Goiânia’ has a very negative tone to it, no rarity within the genre, however the synth tones used sound like they’ve come straight from a school keyboard, especially the orchestral stabs which fill out the mid levels of the track. There is little ingenuity or exploration other than some standard heavy delay effects, and seemingly no effort to create an element which stands out as a driving force for the track. To his credit the track is well mixed, the post production values are somewhere his experience shines through.
‘Blossom’ starts much better, the synth stabs which make up the foundation of the track are very enjoyable and would have made a wonderful lead line. Squillace however pushes the best part of his song to the background and elects to lead with an awful synth string melody. Not only does the tone share its predecessor’s quality of sounding as if straight from a school keyboard, but the composition of the “melody” sounds as if a school child was playing it. If I was not aware this was a seasoned and well respected producer I would have blindly slung this in the bedroom producer who needs to listen to some more music file.
Last but probably not least is ‘Unit 9’, an atmospheric dub inspired number with swirling cliche’d pads and dub delayed stabs to boot. Again this song is unremarkable. It may not clear the dancefloor at 6 in the morning as it does, for the first instance on the release, contain a nice driving beat. However it still lacks any element that would make you remember the track, or for that matter request it.
I don't like to hate on music, especially music that is new to me. However much I want to like it though, it is fruitless and dishonest to maintain that I could find anything in this release that excited me in the slightest.
Ben Stevens
Follow Ben on Twitter: @bennysteves91
