Tag Archives: Rennie Pilgrem

dB Magazine, Music, Review, Writing

Rennie Pilgrem – Pilgremage

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Pilgremage is a journey through which Rennie Pilgrem fully expresses himself musically and shows off his talents. You can hear a wide and diverse range of influence and style, and furthermore see that he is a talented musician as well as brilliant beat manipulator.

The opening track Attention seems totally out of character for Pilgrem, being a short and sweet Acid Jazz style number, complete with funky sax and groovy piano that rolls along nicely. It’s a refreshing change to what you expect from a breaks producer like Pilgrem. Defender begins with classical violins and pumps in with a very house orientated beat, which fades out to a new order style guitar riff, and then moves to an acid fuelled beat track.

Sanctified is a rocky breakbeat tune that will no doubt find it’s way into a Adam Freeland set. ‘Rock and Roll will never die… Techno is Bullshit’ says an American voice – and then you hear Pilgrems voice simply say, ‘wicked, that’s my next tune’ as my favourite tune Gladiator starts. The phat basslines indicative of nuschool breaks rolls over the electro chords, and breakdowns with the voice from the start being cut up to say ‘techno will never die…rock and roll is bullshit’.

Sara Whittaker-Gilbey provides vocals to the anthem Coming Up For Air, which is sure to be a big track over this summer. Uberzone and Pilgrem redo their classic Fuego 2, with its big and nasty bassline, which is followed by Celeb, an electro-acid rant in collaboration with MC Chickaboo about the cult of celebrity. The rough beats return in Trevor Pistol, another stomping nuschool breaks track that combines heavy rock bass with techno infused bleeps. Go Back returns the funk, sounding as though it came straight from some ghetto studio of the 70’s.

The final track on the pilgrimage of aural delights is Atlantis, a smooth, dreamy production that could be made by Future Sound of London or the Orb. There’s also a bonus track called Acid Part 3, which is from the film The Football Factory, made by the people behind Human Traffic. This is a fabulous old school style acid house track, complete with the infamous 303 squelch that defined acid house and distorted vocals saying what else but “acid”.

dB Magazine, Music, Review, Writing

Perfecto Breaks Volume 2 – Mixed by Rennie Pilgrem

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This CD is well mixed, but doesn’t grab me like some of the other breaks compilations I’ve listened to lately. That’s not to say that this is a bad album, by any stretch of the imagination; it’s listenable and enjoyable, but is just “good” as opposed to “amazing”. For example, it’s not as clever as Perfecto Breaks Vol 1, mixed by Lee Coombs, nor is it as “cool” and dance floor orientated as hedonizm by Ellis Dee, but it will have you grooving along for most of the time.

The first track is Pilgrem’s own remix of Timo Maas Help Me featuring Kelis on vocals. This tune takes some while to get into it, but then cruises along nicely with a rolling bassline that carries the listener into the rest of the CD. Most of the tunes are examples of “tech-breaks”, with a perfect example being BLIM’s Dust, which rolls along but doesn’t really go anywhere until the middle, when the infamous Apache break drops and gets the head moving. From this point on the album seems to pick up the pace, with tunes like Rollin n Controllin by Silencer and the very good U Know Y by Moguai.

Pilgrem remixes most of the tunes on this CD, and you’ll find him adding his own little touches throughout, such as dropping snippets of Goldtrix’s It’s Love (Trippin) during Zero’s Emit/Collect, which he also mixes to great effect with Koma and Bones’ Donkey Spanner. There are also lots of effects and cross mixes that are used very well across the whole album. The album ends on a rather “housey” note with Pilgrem’s Tripped-Out mix of Turning It On by Mara.

The album is enjoyable, and Pilgrem is a damn good DJ, but there’s something about this CD that makes me rate it a little lower than other CD’s I’ve listened to lately. Maybe I’ve been over-saturated with the stuff, and this doesn’t shine as much as I expected it to, but I would say to any fan of breaks to give it a listen and make up their own mind.