Kaskade - In The Moment

What better way to pass a perfect, sunny, Australian winter’s day (or a perfect new years day for that matter) than with Kaskade’s ever so sweetly chilled beats? In an album that shows flashes of brilliance, but suffers from inconsistency, Kaskade shows that when it comes to the smoothest, deepest, sexiest house, he’s got it in spades, but still needs to sustain our expectations through the whole mix.

On an album with some moments of true brilliance, it’s a pity to see it start off so roughly – Steppin’ out, the opening track is very up front, beaty house-by-the-numbers. The vocals from Bret Garner are mostly all right, but in parts sound quite cheesy and even a little trite. That’s the dilemma with some of Kaskade’s work, though – he’s an extremely talented artist but sometimes his choice of vocalist leaves you unsure of whether to grin or grimace. Track two moves further toward deep house territory, but Becky Williams’ vocals are just too saccharine for my liking. In this track she almost reminds me of the vocalist from frente, who is so overly sweet that it makes me reach for the sick bag. Thankfully, from here on in it only gets better, and oh how it gets better.

‘I like the way’ flows right along the deep tip with jangly xylophone dripping with jazz rhythms that complement the filtered vocals of Colette Marino superbly. In the liner notes for this track, Jay Lawrence is cited for ‘Vibes’, how cool is that? Next up in Honesty, latin & jazz percussive instruments and the occasional flute perforate the deep, funky beats and the vocals of Amy Michelle are both soulful and believable. This track is a real piece of class and these two tracks probably point to the highpoint of the CD for me.

‘Sweet love’ could very easily have been a remix of ‘It’s you, it’s me’, and has the same vocalist, Joslyn who isn’t in the form that she was in for that masterpiece, but still manages to belt out a decent tune. The beats and guitar are so similar to “It’s you, it’s me”, without the vocals you’d swear it’s the same track. Further along, the curiously named Rob Wannamaker sings over what at times sounds like a break step beat. Rob has some Justin Timberlake-esque moments hitting the high notes – all up it’s a bit too poppy for me.

After an interlude (intermission perhaps?) track, we get the very down-tempo ‘Soundtrack to the soul’. I’d heard the original mix of this track on Kaskade’s 2003 mix CD, San Francisco Sessions V4, which is a sexy, smooth deep house masterpiece. I had hoped that this would be the same version, but unfortunately here we get the slow motion mix which lacks the impact of the original. Perhaps I’m just a dancefloor purist at heart? This version is all strings, low tempo broken beats and soaring vocals – good but nowhere near the quality of the original & along with the dubious ‘interlude’ track, really kills the rhythm of the mix.

‘Everything’ picks up the tempo from around our ankles and zipps into some tight fitting vocals from joslyn and more up front house beats. Following on, ‘Yeah Right’ features a quirky little bit of guitar, funky lo-fi bassline & abrupt, but sincere and soulful vocals that together actually remind me of the Lo Fidelity Allstars’ sound.

The finale is ‘Let you go’ – if ever there was a place for a smooth, sexy, soulful, downtempo duet, it’s the last track on the album. Glorious horns, ambient beats and the lilting vocals of Amanda intertwine with Rob Wannamaker to make this a pure piece of deep house bliss. It’s a track of such quality it’s disappointing the album couldn’t start as strongly as it ended.

With the enormous success of his first album, Kaskade was always going to be hard pressed to produce an album of the outstanding quality we saw back in 2003. Not to say that ‘In the Moment’ didn’t have its moments, it just didn’t have them in the way, shape or form that ‘It’s you, it’s me’ had them. Although, as a bonus, the Australian release contains an 8-track remix CD with 4 interesting remixes of ‘It’s you, it’s me’, which is a score for all you deep house DJs out there.