Send vs. Deep Chill Network: Chilled-Out Funk Send vs. Deep Chill Network: Chilled-Out Funk (Dark Duck - 2000) Why do they call it "vs." when in fact the artists involved always seem to be playing together quite nicely? As Send vs. Deep Chill Network, the alter egos of Alex Cornhill and Dark Duck leader, Stephen Philips go head to head, drumbeats to synthsweeps in the mutual creation of Chilled-Out Funk. If this is a battle, then the winner is anyone who's into long, trance-inducing drum-and-drone soundscapes... Electronic waves crash against an imaginary shoreline as Fresh Air soon comes alive with active (but not necessarily intense) d'n'b style drum patterns. Rough, deep drones surge throughout, erupting and receding like a sonic interpretation of solar flare activity. Mid-tempo percussion riffs seem to get a fluctuating high/low pass filtration during its unvarying course through Fuzzy Passage; a raspy soundstream quavers and flows onward while bleepy electronics phase in and out. Cold Sand, like its namesake, leaves me feeling uncomfortable... while the spacey background textures and cymbal syncopation are wonderful, the bouncily hypnotic synth melody grinds me down after three or four minutes... let alone ten out of 14. It takes several hours to clear the overtly repetitious "doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-do-do-do" from my head... thankfully the final moments swirl in a pleasantly sweltering radiation void. Caustic ripples meet with downwardly/upwardly cascading tones, organ-haze and slowly swaggering beats during Brain Manipulation (6:25), the only track under ten minutes. Low frequencies rumble through Power Lines (17:09), backed by rock-steady beatronics and higher, shimmering emissions. Big, analog synth waves billow and thrum, peppered with spattering cymbalism. True drum'n'bassheads may find Send's rhythm sections a bit monochromatic with little variation on each track's particular theme (they're intentionally downplayed for this project, I'm sure), but as a beat-skeleton, they nicely prop up Deep Chill Network's dark electro-mechanical droneclouds. A nice 70-minute blend of street-ready percussion and sci-fi atmospherics, Chilled-Out Funk warms up the rate-o-meter to an appreciative 8.4. This review posted August 30, 2000 AmbiEntrance © 2000-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).