So much techno released these days omits the good part. Cool drums, check; evocative pads, sure; snatch of addictive melody, yep; hallelujah fuck-yes moment...Detroit, we have a problem. Not so with Abakus, whose driver's license reads Russell Davies. Released in England on his own Modus Records label, We Share the Same Dreams has a surfeit of catchy parts, possibly a genetic inheritance from dad Dave Davies and uncle Ray Davies, founders of The Kinks.
Young Davies embeds sharp, shiny hooks into listeners' heads from the opening track, "Sliding Sh," which marries a dribbling bass synth to a starry little melody. It's nothing earth-shattering, but in a world of tunes that fail to deliver, all the goods arrive intact. Right on its heels comes highlight "Daybreak," a soulful, grayed-out Manchester-style song that could be a lost New Order cut sans Bernard Sumner.
Things turn a little south with "Culture Is Not Your Friend," a middle-of-the-road downtempo track that embarrasses itself with an un-ironic Terrence McKenna sample repeatedly telling us "What civilization is is six billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in." It's the only skipper on the disc. There's nothing wrong with DMT-inspired self-transforming machine elves, but a great deal of the sonics and ideas on this record belong to a more naive electronic era with hopes as big as its JNCOs. Later in the disc, "Lost in the Woods" evokes a Bedrock vibe and "Crystal Vision" seems to reference the dreaming synths of The Streets' "It's Too Late," which itself was a nostalgic nod to growing up during the UK's house and garage renaissance.
In a press release accompanying Abukus' forthcoming Cinnamon Chasers, Davies is said to believe in techno that has "an honest heart, music with good intentions, music that felt like a good friend." It's an increasingly arch house world, so that Davies wears his '90s hippy-acid-garage cred on his sleeve is an act of defiance. It works most of the time, as on the sublime and lovely "Opal Fountain," but often it comes across dippy and dated. If anything, the cheese was introduced in the production, not the compositions themselves. This LP is awfully clean sounding. Smearing some of the grimy stuff across the surface of this record would have done wonders in the modernity department. (Nobody wants to show up on the first day of school in blinding white sneakers.)
We Share the Same Dreams has one foot planted in all the right influences from the previous decade, but the other hasn't quite stepped on solid modern ground. It sounds like a transitional record, with prescient sounds bubbling up only to be hampered by techno 1.0 production. But if the advance tracks from 2009's Cinnamon Chasers are to be believed, Davies is a musician whose smartest and most danceable work is yet to come.
Published /
Tue, 20 Jan 2009
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Tracklist: Abakus - We Share The Same Dreams
 01. We Share the Same Dreams
02. Sliding Sh
03. Daybreak
04. Angel Dust
05. Understated
06. Culture Is Not Your Friend
07. Excession
08. Deun Deu
09. The Only Life We've Known
10. Lost in the Woods
11. Crystal Vision
12. Opal Fountain
13. How Does It Feel to Be Real? | 
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