Andrew K-Rock - 10,000 BC

Hear The Track Here

Third time around for Russian Alternative musician Andrew K-Rock and I think both of us enter this review thinking the same thing: will it be third time lucky? So lets get the good news out of the way and say that at least 10,000 BC is a lot more musically coherent than either of the previous two tracks. Mind you, it still has many of the problems that dog previous releases and that is down to one thing and one thing alone: lack of experience. As I have mentioned before, Andrew's music carries the distinct tang of 'lego' music programs such as Ejay or Magix or it could be down to the samples he is using but it often spells incoherence.

On first playing 10,000 BC I thought nothing very much had improved but the more I played the track, the more this one seemed to make sense to me, I also found it helped watching the accompanying video (on Andrews main Soundclick page) which was of excellent quality. The general point to make here is that this track is not some kind of pretend dance music, as were the first two tracks. 10,000 BC tries the classical approach and - for the most part - succeeds remarkably well even though there are some noticeable hesitations between samples.

One of the worst problems I have had with this artist before is his tendency to just mash samples together without and seeming thought or sense of what would work. That tendency has been (somewhat) reined in, although there are still areas - notably in the classical sections - where sounds collide against each other rather than working in harmony. The real telltale about the use of samples though is that there is no overhang, the way there would be if you were using real instruments, and that definitely spoilt it for me. Having said all that, this is a lot better than previous work and bodes well for continued development of this young musician.

Broody, moody (and marred) classically inclined soundtrack.