DJ Q
Face the MUSIC
Filter/Dorado Records Limited 1997

Mecano structures, refracted symmetry, plastic white and industrial greens
...and three letters :
DJ Q

Face the MUSIC.

DJ Q, alias Paul Flynn, does indeed offer us MUSIC deserving of its capitals. Disciple of Carl Craig, Q has done away with the clubbing bpm escalations which provoke a chill down the spine for the chemically challenged. His grooves kick in without warning. And no-one can refuse the wholesome, straight beats subtly tuned to syncopation. Pointless trying to resist the pumping Delirious whose childlike piano rhythm could loop forever. Or the up-front Space Dance where all is revealed from the first bar. Or Glasgow's Jazz :

"You are not in New York, you are not in Chicago,
You are in Glasgow."

Face the MUSIC.

Simple arrangements of House/Garage loops are pasted onto fat driving basses creating hypnotic cycles interspersed not with predictable fill-ins and crescendos, but changing sound textures and qualities. Q's favorite technique : sound from behind an opening and closing door (as demonstrated in Björk's There's More To Life Than This, Debut), volume and freshness being muted only to come back identical yet refreshingly different. It is not metre or rhythm but distance and clarity which are principally at/on play. This lends Q's music a Trance-like quality, blurring sonal layers on solid structures, as illustrated in Fila, a track pinned to the clear House beat and a rolling subbass.

DJ Q is moving House. On.

DJ Q lays down a style, a sound, an irrepressable identity with Face the MUSIC but not, however, at the expense of his polyvalency.

Electronic pulses are replaced with bongos, marracas and open bass arpeggios in the girating rumba shuffle of Flying Home - to Rio ? Smooth and relaxing.
At another extreme, the sustained organ chords of She'll Be Gone, fragile and trembling, hesitate between rupture and rapture - towards a heavenly Halcyon +on fugue à la Orbital ? Without quarter, the DJ Q effect takes hold and we rise, soaring towards the Orient.

Then there is the brooding darkness of       
Going Forward in Reverse -        
a cold, deforming slow-motion       
of Massive Attack       
come-down       
melacholy ?    

Life's not just Happy House, you see.

The poetry of William Hall should also not been forgotten, a lone prophetic voice on the etherial Make Up Your Mind and a believer professing faith in "the Undergroung Religion" on We Are One. Poet of Modernity, Hall attempts to distill meaning and meaningfulness out of the experience of the late-90's House Generation ; "Until the walls come crashing down, we will maintain...",  with a lyrical Scottish accent which adds human presence and reminds us of where we are.
So let us "live life for the moment, for in a moment, life will have moved on" and let's...

Face the MUSIC.

A single-minded album of particular quality,
Face The MUSIC is the perfect way to start a Friday Night.
And an even better way of continuing it, whatever day of the week it is.

ML