Global Eyes 3 has landed. Simonfromuk checks it out.

This pack, retailing at $30, contains a CD, a handbook, some postcards, a poster and a nice pink box to put them all in. Their PR says it’s ‘created as a shared vision that unites the individuals, industry and creative groups who weave the fabric of global electronic music culture’. Of course, it would say that. Kelly Chandler, editor of Global Eyes, explains it like this:

‘We started Global Eyes to fill a hole in the market, as we wanted access to all this electronic music information but we were unable to find it without spending hours searching the web… We included artwork, music and the creative energy that is behind the electronic music movement’

So the ‘shared vision’ mentioned above is fundamentally a directory of listings, for all the lovely sentiments expressed. Occupying about a third of the space of the handbook, it’s great. Internet links to most things dance-related across the world – record labels, festivals, promoters, distributors, shops and media (including your favourite and mine inthemix.com.au) from many different countries are listed across 30 pages and all the major players are represented as well as many smaller operations, providing any casual surfer with an interest in dance music hours of fun and representing a genuine asset to people involved in the industry.

Turn the handbook over and you’ve got a 60-page magazine with plenty of interesting dance-related stuff in there: artwork, reports on mad scenes from around the world (doofs on Greek islands, parties beneath Mount Fuji), stories, philosophy – a nice mixture of material that’s interesting enough, though I would have personally liked to read more about the world party scene rather than the somewhat self-indulgent responses of some of the artists whose work appears in the book. If anything, Global Eyes is guilty of attempting to cram too many great ideas into too little space.

The postcards and poster are good fun, the poster acting as a double-sided calendar with phases of the moon to make sure you don’t show up on Ko Phangan at the wrong time.

The CD is great – ten tracks, half of them unreleased, from artists the world over. Taking in many different innovative styles, it’s a great snapshot of where electronic music is at this point in time. Standout tracks include The Kumba Mella Experiment’s ‘Cleaning Fluid’, a lovely chilled track with some lovely dubby production and wild Eastern influences that don’t sound cheesy or hackneyed, ‘Dirty 6teen’ by Phony Orphants from Denmark – a blistering bit of zunga psy-trance and ‘Batuque’ from Deetron in Switzerland, a great pounding dark tech-house tune that is hypnotic and epic while retaining the funk. My absolute favourite track on the CD is an Australian one, a fantastic piece of sharp electro from the people at Southern Outpost records in the form of ‘Programmatic’ that combines precision programming with artistic flair.

‘Global electronic music culture’, is a pretty big concept. There’s a lot of diversity out there so it seems that the Global Eyes people have set themselves a pretty tricky goal i, given that they’re allowing themselves only an hour of music, about 90 flyer-sized pages, 4 postcards and a double-sided postcard. It’s good news, though, as the team from Tranc.ition have done a great job here, creating a pack that will appeal to true fans of this wonderful community we’re a part of. $30 for the CD alone represents great value and the book, the postcards and poster make Global Eyes 3 all the more attractive.

In this age of mp3 downloads where the big companies are desperately seeking ways to add value to their releases so that we don’t all just get on Soulseek and download them, I find it fitting that an independent publisher has hit on a great way to do this. Look at it as a yearly version of Ministry or Mixmag for the underground, not the mainstream, that celebrates the cultural, not the crass.

Global Eyes 3 is available now, all over the world, and is distributed in Australia by Stomp. A promotional tour with Eat Static kicks off on 2 Dec.