Craggz & Parallel - Turn the Page

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  • The story behind Craggz & Parallel's—formerly Craggz & Parallel Forces—latest album is the stuff of dreams for excitable press agents itching to construct an interesting narrative, one that lends the illusion of importance. I get the feeling that this is half-true in the case of Turn the Page—even the title has groan-worthy ramifications of moving into new frontiers. The story goes that they lost the Forces part of their name, and—reduced to a duo—Newcastle's finest simply couldn't function without the expertise of their missing link. Nearly giving up after failing to produce anything worthwhile, they started all over again, finding new inspiration in old synths. Who doesn't love a bit of analogue fetishism? The result, then, is an album conceived not of simple drum & bass tools but rather pored-over compositions that glow with the kind of warmth you'd expect from analogue. While most of the tracks stick to conventional d&b rhythms, each one deals in a different palette, a different set of sounds, colours and moods, breathing some life into the monochrome music. Turn the Page is a record that refuses to deal in subgenres, instead reimagining drum & bass as the bustling scene of experimentation and crossbreeding it once was. It's not often that you can describe drum & bass music as truly exciting anymore, and Craggz and Parallel tread that rare earth more than a few times here. The album has any number of blinding highlights, but "Chamber" is the star. Covered in a thin outer layer of microscopic hairs that bristle and twitch in the face of tinny electro synths, it unpredictably bursts into acrobatic arpeggios. Beginning with the interlude "Matrix 6," the second half is its most experimental. Composed almost entirely of swirling synths, "No Wave" feigns nostalgia for a time that never actually existed, "Metroplex" does a convincing job of assimilating classic Detroit elements into d&b, and "Mute Mix" provides a chilly take on the exhausted afterhours sigh of Autonomic. The album ends on a high note with the peak-time neurofunk of "Future Shock" and the triumphant closer "Forever," which alternates between windy synth valleys and stuttering percussive minefields, the occasional geyser of a bassline erupting when the drums strike the wrong patch of earth. Like so many experiments, Turn the Page often falls on its face, most egregiously so with the awful Depeche Mode homage "Slave." Abandoning any vestiges of d&b for a transparent tribute, Warren Dite's Dave Gahan impersonation sounds like it could have benefited from a few more takes. Meanwhile, tracks like "The Sleeper" and the title track take up space on an already-long LP without doing too much of interest, and their attempt at electro in "This Is Not the End" lacks the distinctive punch of the kind of Detroit stuff they're aiming for; Drexciya they ain't. Fortunately, Turn the Page has enough exciting moments to keep it going and carries a thirst for new ideas that's inspiring in an otherwise insular world; there's untold potential for where they can go with this sound, even if they haven't quite figured it all out yet. You can go ahead and add Craggz & Parallel to the list of names (Commix, Instra:mental, ASC, dBridge, et al.) that are driving d&b past its mediocrity-mired midlife crisis.
  • Tracklist
      01. Turn The Page 02. Release 03. Chamber 04. Slave feat. Warren Dite 05. Now I See feat. Kasra 06. The Sleeper 07. Matrix 6 08. No Wave feat. DRS 09. Metroplex 10. Mute Mix 11. This Is Not the End 12. Future Shock 13. Forever
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