Rating:
Genre:
Electronica
Release Date: 02/22/2005
The first disc in
Hernán Cattáneo's two-CD
Renaissance: The Master Series, Vol. 2 starts so slowly it's bound to have the clubbiest of kids saying "boring." Their loss, because the DJ is spinning some of the most soothing and rich-tasting
progressive house available.
Cattáneo loves subdued tracks and he's an ace at finding them.
Delays'
"Lost in a Melody" could make the paint melt off the wall, while
Pole Folder's
"Salvation on Slavery Sins" is rich with atmosphere. Come
Patrick Turner and
Chris J's
"Machine Life," things pick up and threaten to become a party, but
Cattáneo's such a smooth mixer you'll have to backtrack to figure out when the transition from mellow to up-tempo happened. Disc two gets going much faster, but smooth and spacy is still the rule, with most tracks falling under the heading of "nocturnal."
Micah's
"Come From" is a dreamy treat that works in a bit of
nu-breaks, a style
Cattáneo is becoming quite the fan of, judging from all the whip-crack beats on the second half of disc two. It would have been nice if he would have taken out at least one of the dramatic bridges of the songs on disc two, since all this theatrical stopping and starting gets to be tedious outside of a club. Course it's hard to go wrong ending with
Hybrid and
Underworld, and the way
Cattáneo mixes the two is a master's thesis in tension building. The moody disc one is the reason to check the set and far and away the "active listening" portion, but disc two has enough of that magic
Cattáneo blending to say this is an overall success.
~David Jeffries, All Music Guide
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