Sadly Disappointing
MTJones | San Jose, CA United States | 01/28/2001
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I want to make my biases clear before I begin. First, I'm a big fan of Shpongle, even though Simon Posford and Raja Ram have released only one CD under that name. Are You Shpongled? is one of the prize releases of my collection, and one album that will probably never wear out its welcome. I love the album from beginning to end, and although none of the songs are weak, I feel that the last few tracks - a group that "Divine Moments of Truth" belongs to - are especially strong. I generally hate singles, but a remix disc of this track is more than welcome in my home.
But the more and more I listen to this single, the more I'm convinced that it's an effort to cash in on one of the best songs off the Shpongle album, instead of an effort to reward devoted fans with great music. And I KNOW Shpongle has some great "Divine..." mixes on hand, since a few bootleg copies are floating around on the Internet already. In fact, I purchased this single in the hopes that they would be on it.
The reason I say that it's a cash-in is because two of the three mixes are essentially club hits from a project that is made not for dancing but listening; you can't get more transparent than that. The "Instrumental Mix" is very close to the original, except for the removal of about 2 minutes of the introduction. The main alterations are the addition of a muted dance beat and the subtle background effects that seem to pepper a lot of Hallucinogen (Posford's reknowned psychedelic trance project) tracks.
Then there's the "Shpongle Trance Remix." As the name suggests, it is more strongly based in trance structures, and it winds up having more of a dancy than meditative aura to it. This remix is really not that bad, but again, it's not what I expected in light of the original mood of Are You Shpongled?, which focused more on trippy chillout music than psytrance. For for those who want a hyper-peppy trance mix of the song, this is it. But unlike the "Instrumental Mix," which actually removes some material, the "Shpongle Trance Remix" seems to leave the original song intact and merely compresses it to fit into an 8-minute space. As a result, there are some very uptempo segments in the track, which ruin the original feeling of the song.
Personally, I feel that the "Original Russian Bootleg Mix" is the only remix on the single that holds true to the original "Divine Moments of Truth" - and that's because it IS the original "Divine Moments of Truth." I honestly cannot find a single difference between this version and the original, except that this "remix" is 10 seconds shorter. I'm mystified as to why this is even on the disc.
In a nutshell, I feel ripped off. Eight bucks isn't a huge loss in the scheme of things, but the six months of anticipation is harder to get over when it turns into disappointment of equal magnitude. I'm especially angry that, for a release that claims all the remixes were done by Shpongle, two of them sound more like Hallucinogen and the third one isn't even a remix at all.
If you're looking for trance versions of Shpongle material, this will definitely quench your thirst. But don't buy Divine Moments of Truth with the expectation that you'll hear anything new in the Shpongle style. I hate criticizing Posford and Ram, since their first release was just SO AMAZING, but I have to criticize this single for not being Shpongle. That's fair, right?"
Track Listings (3) - Disc #1