- Agaric, Walker and Dumb Unit head Jeremy P. Caulfield are all artists who have relocated from their original bases (Sweden, America and Canada, respectively) to Berlin. Chase's Dream isn't dispensable. But there's a nagging feeling that it wants to be like everybody else.
Production-wise, it's solid. It's well-engineered from a technical point of view, with balance of the sounds and plenty of needle ballistics. This is shown most clearly in "Coconut Cartel," a rolling samba with punch and dynamism. The musical ideas—simple hooks, complex rhythmic constructions—feel comfortable and familiar, but not too familiar. And these three tunes don't adhere particularly to the beaten track. "Chase's Dream," for example, is a game of two halves. The first is focused on a bassline that's more punctuation than riff, but more than just a rhythmic element as well, and the second half is trackier and deeper.
But "Stone Hengela," with an unconvincing electric piano riffing lazily and a strap-on bassline underpinning generic Balearic washing, is decent background music, but nothing more. "Cartel," too, doesn't deliver on its promise of devastation as much as you'd like it to, stretching the intro for a good 50% of the track before anything particularly interesting happens. Overall, the split of originality and recycling over the whole package is about fifty-fifty as well, with the A-side taking the lion's share of the good stuff.
Tracklist A Chase's Dream
B1 Coconut Cartel
B2 Stone Hengela