For contexts sake I feel that I need to get something out the way early on this review. I have never really “got” dance music. With numerous genres there has always been an understanding, an appreciation for the work that goes into the creative process. But with dance music there is never that connection. It invokes memories of the mid-late nineties. Kevin and Perry in Ibiza. Suped-up Vauxhall Nova’s with body kits and large exhausts. Sub-woofers taking up the entire boot space so you can’t actually fit anything of use in there. On Logic1000’s debut LP, Mother, I am trying to be open-minded. My feelings are 20 years old and are invoked from teenage years of being yelled at for being a greebo.
Instead of those oft shown ideas of Ibiza foam parties and drunk Brits abroad I’m greeted with a more mellow soundscape. With that, it seems to go too far in the opposite direction. While the majority of Mother is built up of instrumental tracks I feel I’m on hold with an NHS doctors surgery or an insurance company. What comes across is very neutral – what would happen if Switzerland made a record. The drum beats that make up each song don’t seem to push any boundaries. There is one moment in “Heartbeat,” one note that kicks in differently from everything that has come before and a sense of a new direction with added depths, a more intense flow might arise. But that is all it is, one moment.
Sprinkled in between are a number of cameos from a variety of vocalists but even their efforts seem unable to levitate the work of Samantha Poulter AKA Logic1000 above the level of mundane. It all just feels too safe. It’s music to put on to drown out the boredom of a task that requires concentration but that can’t be rushed. They say you are old when the music you used to go out and dance to is now the music you clean to. I am cleaning to pop punk from 2002. This is reminiscent of the time I was sent on a stress release course – and then preceded to fall asleep due to the music that now feels very similar to Logic1000’s debut offering (please insert the Family Guy style cutaway here).