- If you like dub techno but find it’s a bit – I dunno – samey, then this is the record for you. Jichael Mackson, the Munich spoonerism responsible for the towering twenty-minute acid vs. dub cut ‘Tee Trinken In Braunen Salon’ in 2005, here mixes sleek and appealing dub techno into – get this – Chris Isaak. ‘Wicked Game’ to be exact. Sounds like sacrilege, I know - you can almost hear the bedroom boys squealing “You can’t do that! Basic Channel would never do that!”, which is all part of its sly appeal. But mostly it just sounds good, with Isaak’s familiar guitar arriving out of nowhere as a dreamlike backwards sample that would do Axel Willner proud, before the track resolves as cheekily plucked guitar notes pasted over rolling-on-again dub techno. Like ‘Tee Trinken…’, it’s structurally brilliant, seguing between two seemingly unrelated parts to create something unique (Phony DJs would do well to use these tracks to pretend to mix records!), but this time the tonal contrast between the austere greyness of the dub and the sentimentality of the Isaak track is especially inspired. Half a point off for the B-sides, which are in turn silly (‘Frietag Abend’) and morose (‘Snuff’), but that shouldn’t matter. ‘The Grass is Always Greener’ is one of the best records of 2007.
TracklistA1 The Grass Is Always Greener...
A2 Freitag Abend
B1 Snuff