MARCO'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2012 - #14 (Part 10 of 23)

At #14 we find a name that most of you will know very well by now: talking about none other than UBERBYTE. The release, of course, it's 'Five Year Plan', an album that has been discussed a lot in the past months, and that in fact I personally reviewed for Brutal Resonance.

So I'll be extra lazy, and repost the review :)

Sometimes, time is a bitch. I guess, in fact, it always is, it's really in its own nature to disappear when you need it the most, leaving you with piles of things to do and having no clue on when you will be able to actually do them.

This is one of those cases: I was supposed to write the original review of Uberbyte's 'Five Year Plan' here on Brutal Resonance. Because it is, without doubts, one of the highlights of the year, and I truly enjoyed listening to it, and spinning several of its tracks in my dj sets in the past months, and so I wanted to share with you all why I liked it so much.

But time got in the way, things did pile up, and eventually my colleague Danya already posted a very in depth, song-to-song, review of the album that I suggest you go read immediately if you want to know all the juicy details of this awesome release.

I'd rather focus on something else, and that is why an album like this is a real breath of much-needed fresh air in this stagnant scene. The answer is quite simple: because it sounds and feels fresh.

We have nothing ground-breaking here, nothing pioneering, but the perfect alchemy that derives from mixing different styles, without any fear or even worse, any shame of venturing into different soundscapes than the usual, and still delivering a solid dance album.

There's no song that sounds exactly like the previous, as if Pyne and comrades made a conscious effort to try and change the sound palette each and every time, and again this is a statement of pure love for music, not the awful stylism you keep on finding in whatever is dubbed "industrial" these days, even if I gotta admit it looks like more and more artists are taking the risk and signing the pledge of evolution.

But is it the "perfect" album? As you can see, I decided to rate it 8 out of 10, one mark less than what Danya gave it originally: this is only a personal choice tho, because I have the feeling that there's still a bit too much cheese here and there to justify a perfect score. While songs like "We Like The Bass" work very well on the dancefloor, while hardstyle and jumpstyle seem to keep the kids happy and bouncy in clubs, I'm not sure that's what we need to further evolve the electro/industrial scene: call me a censor if you will, but I do think it would be better if we moved away from the cheese and concentrate on the good. Not like there isn't a-plenty, out there.

In conclusion: go get 'Five Years Plan'. It's one of the best releases of the year, and the best Uberbyte album to date.

Suggested listening: "Threadhead", "The Serpent" & "The Dove", "Cthulhu". Waits.