- The third installment of TCR's popular "Izm" series, sees one of the biggest rave DJ's circa 90-92, Ellis Dee, on the mix. Without a doubt, if you've got a DJ name like Ellis Dee, you progbably would have no problem getting gigs around the acid house days of dance. Hedonizm's slogan at the bottom of the cover states that it's breakbeat for party animals and represents a new direction for the label as TCR releases are usually associated with being "techy" and "hard".
Being the DJ in the mix on this CD, Ellis represents with a couple of his own tracks and remixes and starts the mix off with Set Free by the Clubriders, the collaborative name for Ellis Dee and partner Syrus. What an opening tune! This should be big especially when it seems to borrow from "That's The Way, I Like It", "U Can't Touch This" and an early 90's diva house tune. Disco-step baby! The other Ellis Dee & Syrus tune is The Chase a hyped-up breaks roller with a long ambient intro appearing toward the end of the mix.
McMillan & Tab's Lost World has been gaining a lot of play with DJ's who like that mellow break and monotonic bass line. it appears in it's breakbeaty remixed form rather than the deep progressive house of the original.
Vigi & Zero's Ultra-Funk appears in it's Latina Form - guaranteed to get the party started, especially with the latin percussion, whistles and overall festival feel. Wicked tune! Zero comes in with his own production Emit towards the end of the mix, which gets slightly techier compared to the first part of the mix.
Transformed and rolling out are the Autobots with two tracks in succession, Chickers and Blogger, both of which I have absolutely no idea of the meanings. Chickers uses a nice rolling break using the "Huh!" sample from the funk days of breaks, and a really dirty bassline, yet it compliments and hypes up Koma & Bones' Powercut appearing in it's Rewired form, which saved it from the very industrial feel of the original. On a similar tip, Bloggers, also features the use of dirty bass, not as heavy as Chickers, but it also uses a lot more techy stabs on top. Both good tunes that compliment one another sweetly.
Label owner and awesome producer, Rennie Pilgrem appears alongside Chris Carter as London Funk Society on Now That We've Found Dub a breaks tune cutting up the vocal sample of "Now That We've Found Love". Carter rounds out the CD with a Randy remix of Random Factors which was the opening tune to Pilgrem's Tribalizm CD from 2002. The original tune was a very dark and techy tune and suited Tribalizm perfectly with it's deep mood, now it's been hyped up for Hedonizm and it's more uplifting and something that can be danced to.
What can I say? After hearing it from start to finish, I wanted another round and let it rewind to the beginning and go again. This mix takes the nu-skool tunes and makes something funky out of them. Once again, TCR is pushing the boundaries of breakbeat, this time with the funkier breaks tunes and redefining the usually frowned upon ("ohh man it's too techy/proggy/hard" - I hear it all the freakin time!) nu-skool genre.