DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

LTJ Bukem / Bjorn – Rhodes To Freedom / Watercolours / Inside My Soul / God Chord

2000

  I hope everyone had a great weekend? Back for more Good Looking Records on the gently boughed shelf. Well, not quite boughed but staked with a lots of yellow sleeve spines on this one. Kallax shelves don’t really bough do they? Anyway, I hope everyone is well?

   Today we move onto the second 12” in this of the first double packs of Good Looking. We also feature an artist who I feel should have made a lot more music. Bjorn Stokes. The tunes he made on this plate are two of the best that you’ll hear on the GLR label. Not only that, a certain Simon Vispi from Intense, is on mixing desk duties. The results therefore are pretty crystal. Any Intense involvement is a signal to quality.

   ‘Inside My Mind’ surveys a million dreams that glide effortlessly along with this killer tune. There’s a level in this tune that pushes a lot of other tunes down under the surface. It moves you, gyrates you and swells a power hungry whirlpool of pure highs throughout the whole track. I really have to say that this is a truly magnificent piece of core star explosive, chill out drum and bass. The bass just broods unwaveringly and the little tech plinks, vocals and stacks of pads, inject you until the heavens tear open and the atoms of this sound soak into you. I cannot emphasize just how good this tune is. Bjorn smashed it into orbit with this one. 

   ‘God Chord’ on Side B of this second disc, takes an Amazonian stance and cascades a charmed break and subtle keyed hue to hover over the twitching landscapes of the equatorial plains. The work in this tune has a lot of Bukem traits, the calming waters, animal calls and that poetic pipe. Based on the standard of this track and ‘Inside My Mind’, Bjorn should have rattled off so many more tunes. It’s a real head scratcher as to why he didn’t. ‘God chord’ was in fact released as a Test Press, in 1998 on Rugged Vinyl, which never went as far as a main release. I wonder what the story was there? Any ideas Paul Bendall?

   Tomorrow we move onto the next double 12”release, . More superb music heads into our lives. Good Looking in full flow. We also switch the artists duties from Nick to another top creator.