The Advent – Sketched For Life

Advent review

To all the vocal haters (and the strong silent types alike), y’all need to check yo’self. Pretty sure you’d be the same folks to be upset if a record had swearing in it without a “parental advisory” disclaimer. Maybe it should have said “Funky DJ Tools enclosed” then everyone might get it.

THESE ARE 💯 DJ cuts, made for DJ’s, ready to light any dance floor up. If you bought this, or were put off by this CD/LP for not being a proper “listening album”, this wasn’t for you in the first place. Its like taking a Mills set list and making a Spotify playlist, it don’t work like that! You’ll be bored and complain how wack some of the songs are.

Colin & Cisco collectively have deep legendary catalogues. They both deserve the respect they have earned by constantly evolving from their earliest release right up till present day!

You can always count on The Advent for solid techno, and SKETCHED FOR LIFE is no different. From the rhythmic pounding of "Hi Jack" to the vocal samples and sci-fi touches of "Inn Touch" or the funk bass of "Keep It Under." The Advent has never been really known for their complex melodies or compositions, but for keep the floor filled, and "The Vault" fills that purpose well. "Link" brings in a few moody synths to break up the beat, but "Travel" sticks with the pounding, letting "Chiba" bring the acid. A second disc of previously released tracks never veers far from the floor, though, with the first tracks ("Sketch 1-3") offering very little variation, though the darkness on "3" does add some flavor. "Sketch O Matic" is pure clanging, though, and the tracks don't show much personality or distinctiveness. It might not be a full life, but it's a convincing enough sketch.

I guess The Advent's only album on Tresor Records leaves me with this strange feeling of actually not having been listening to music for a little under ninety minutes. What I mean is, there is barely anything wrong with the music, but there's nothing great either. The first CD consists of new tracks, while disc two recollects tracks off three vinyl releases by Cisco Ferreira on Tresor.
Here's the deal: while listening to this album, I have not once raised an eye brow, or pinched myself to check if I was awake while listening to some extraordinary music or stopped in awe as a marvellous tune blasted out of my speakers. Likewise, I have not one pushed the skip button in disbelief or overall disappointment. No bad material here, at all.
So, the problem is that the whole album is just 'good', in a way that'll make you play it once, the first time you get your hands on it, and who knows when again? It doesn't have a single tune so striking that you'd want to play it for your friend and impress him with some new, rocking and fresh stuff by The Advent, let alone something you would play for your rock inclined girlfriend, in order to show her a track that best exemplifies what you're all about. From a DJ's view point, most of these tracks will obey their duty on the dance floor - play any one for 3 to 4 minutes and the crowd won't stop dancing, but they won't look amazed either.
Basically, The Advent gives us 18 straight forward, linear, but overly formulaic tracks that don't live up to the name and fame. Temptation, Sketch 1 and Sketch 3 to me sound like they were influenced by Mills' older work on Axis, with their minimalistic percussion patterns and occasional spaced out and austere melodies, Chiba has some nice acid synths, but yet again nothing you'll keep in your head for more than a day and a half, while Sketch 2 and Sketcherz Main are bleak attempts at hitting the hard techno fans on the nail. The rest of this album sounds like stuff you've heard a thousand times beofre, which is not bad per se, but you need quality and effort to make it sound interesting over 18 tracks, and there's very little effort and real interest I hear on "Sketched for life". If you want to hear be quality mental or hard techno from the era, pick an album like "At first sight", "Loudboxer", "Paranoid", "Walking on wires", "Chaos and order", etc. There are tons of more elaborate albums in the same niche floating around.
And oh yeah, the tracks 4-7 on the second disc were released as an awesome 2x12" in 1999 on Tresor, called "Sound sketchez #2", and you should get it if you can, as it is much more useful than, and cool, anything on this album. My pennies...

if you like pounding techno (like me), i can only advise you: buy this record immediately. Especially the first disc with the new songs is really amazing. Within 1 single track, there's so much variation, unbelievable! Great work by the almost 15 years (!) in the techno scene active Cisco Ferreira!