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Antix: Wanderers

Antix are Auckland brothers Barton and Hayden Strom. www.antixmusic.co.nz describes their sound as "progressive psytrance". 'Wanderers' is the third CD they have released through Denmark's indie dance music label Iboga Records. They made for an interesting read in the last issue of NZM and the pair certainly get around, with a slate of European dates posted on their MySpace page (myspace.com/antixfiord). This disc is eight tracks of instrumental blip music, with elements of Doctor Who and Underworld. Each track is at least seven minutes long, lulling the listener into a suitably hypnotic state. The central oonst remains constant, so eventually you forget about it and the sound and echo effects sweep in from the sides to throw you off balance. Many of the tunes bounce along on a repeated syncopated synthbass note. I like this sort of thing, particularly at outdoor festivals, but inevitably this style of music tends to make more sense with the aid of psychotropics and laser lighting. Being primarily digital and computer-derived, the hyper-clean production could also be maligned as sterile. B.H.D skates uncomfortably closely towards EuroDisco or a Christophe Mourthe video soundtrack, but otherwise this is a solid proponent of the genre and a brain-squelching head nodder.

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