V/A - Calling All Nations

If you were to see Calling All Nations on the shelf of a shop, you may pick it up on the merit of its artwork, a dynamic illustration of a samurai-staff-wielding Eskimo. The excitement of this iconic sketch is however a false door that leads to a relatively boring two-disc album. The genre is generally minimal electro and minimal house, and most of the beats go ‘doof doof’ or ‘donk donk’. Almost all have something in them that stops them being too dull – an interesting sound sample, or a little melody - but all these are superficial changes, layers that cover a structure that is essentially quite unsurprising. Exceptions to the mundane are the following: Seanrider, with its big dynamics and sounds; the slightly insane piece of industrial electro that is ‘clown punch’; and ‘Delboy’s revenge’, although this can also be mind numbingly repetitive at times. Calling All Nations heralds itself as an international album, which is quite saddening, as it presents different parts of the world as musically indistinguishable. If variety is the spice of life, then homogeneity must be the dust of death. And boredom. [Josh Coppersmith-Heaven]