dcallen - Watching the Moment Slip Away

Hear The Track Here

I did a count of the number of times I have mentioned this artist over the past few years and got a total of over 40 separate times. THAT, believe it or not, is amazing and it came as much of a shock to me as it may do to you. That's because, over the years I have known him, dcallen has become a kind of standard I judge OTHER electronica by since he has long surpassed what I call the 'normal' electronica crowd. Although Soundclick has (and has always had) a large electronica community, there haven't been that many REAL notables come from it IMHO. In fact I could pretty much count them on two hands, and there is no doubt that Dave would be in that bunch somewhere.

It was noticable that I included dcallen as a SC Big Beast in my 2005 year end Stevies and that was in a year that was extremely quiet on the new release front. That was on the strength of his 'rock' collaboration Bad Karma Gonna Get You (July 2005) and if you hear nothing else from this artist I definitely suggest you don't give this track a miss. As good as it ever gets. Dave says he makes 'melodic electronic music for people who don't like electronic music' and I think I would have to agree with him. Alongside someone like Bonamici, these guys definitely stretch the definition of what constitutes electronica. Mind you, rather than listening to my endless platitudes about this fine artist get yourself over to his page and taste some of this for yourself and you'll see why he has such a following. Watching the Moment Slip Away is billed as Electronica: Ambient but - as usual - it's much more than that.

There's a definite wandering into Bonamici territory here because - to my ears - this is much more a soundtrack feel to this. Either that or it's the LSD just kicking in :D The thing that I've always liked about Dave's work is his attention to sound detail, each instrument lovingly tweaked to bring out it's best flavours and Watching The Moment has this in shedfulls. I have to be honest and state that this laid back, lets-all-have-a-nice-sleep routine isn't usually something I go for but -as usual - Dave makes it more than worthwhile. As I say, it's been a while since I have heard from this artist (he has been extremely busy with other things) but I do hope this means a return to the release schedule of the past. As we all know, you can never get enough of this kind of quality.

Class act, and no mistake.