CD Reviews

Mark Farina

Sessions | Ministry of Sound

By MICHAEL FREEDBERG | June 30, 2006

3.5 Stars

DJ Mark Farina

Mark Farina has been making his mixes in the DJ booth and as a hired remixer for other artists for so long, it’s a wonder this two-disc session didn’t appear sooner. If it had, it would have sounded much different: the music here is up to date in its scratchy trance textures, its æthereal but edgy vocals, its quotes from classic disco (Pool Party’s “Nick Chacona Pool Party”), its velvety soft take on acid style (Lil’ Mark’s “What?” and Mike Steele’s “Does Not Compute”), its funky groovaliciousness (the Juan Maclean’s “Give Me Every Little Thing,” Bryan Jones’s “Change My World”), and — above all — its atmospheric restatements of house music’s blues sources and diva gospel vocals. The palette is as diverse as can be, but it all holds together, and more than together, thanks to Farina’s overlay and quick-cut mixes, made on the texture as well as the beat, so that one song seems to become the next and not just lead into it. Nowhere in either of these sets does Farina become bored with sound, or repeat an obvious hook, or let the rhythm drop away in the annoying manner common to current trance sessions. This is music for club kids who mean it when they say (as does the Juan Maclean), “Don’t stop, give me every little thing!”

On the Web
Mark Farina: http://www.markfarina.net/

Related: Homespun hero, Electronic Van Dyk, After hours, More

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