ANDRE KRONERT Schallplatten & CDs

Review: "There are a lot of DJs now, I call them horses...", goes the open-ended narrative exposition of Andre Kronert's 'Open Our Eyes'. Even though the track refuses to erogate any further its musings on other DJs, there is an implied sense of oneupmanship and largesse. Said lay DJs are meant to be jockeys, but they end up defaulting to acting like the "horses" they ride; and here we can be sure that something's gone wrong; that some impinging force, be it economics, be it sheer want of will, has stolen from them their agency, their creativity, resulting in bland, with-the-grain selections. Kronert betrays his stated antagonism - to archetypal lapsing into unthinking fanservice on the part of the DJ - via four turbid, low-slung mini-tech weight heaters, each of which grow increasingly dubby and stabby as the EP progresses; we're asked to 'Close Our Eyes' again by the time of the B1, suggesting an immanent limit to our aspirations as DJs, and those long-tailed piano chords on the 'Revelation mix' also carry serious transcendental implications.