Prometheus – Robot.O.Chan

Very well conceived and produced but after several listens it doesn't really stick with me for some reason. Maybe it's because I have a difficult time creating mental images and settings while listening to this album. I prefer similar albums like Koxbox's U-Turn, the Process album, or first Younger Brother.

Worth a listen for anybody into the genre though, I'd respect anyone who loved this album. Has a sound that is generally in line with full-on with how the kicks and bass are mixed. But the basslines are more active and diverse and the kicks have a lot of room space. There's also a lot of hand percussions and the like, often heavily manipulated. Fans of any kind of psychedelic trance from 96 onwards should get at least something out of this. As for me, I'm still on the fence on keeping this CD but glad I've got a number of listens out of it.

The best psy-trance album ever in my opinion. You cant go wrong with this one. Every track is composed flawlessly and with a touch of musical quality that only Simon Posford can match. Every track is a dancefloor smash that I can always look to to play out. Prometheus brings new life to psytrance. His second album "Corridor of Mirrors" is good but fails to match this. Maybe not the best, because I havent heard one tenth of the psy-trance out there, but it beats out all the dark, aggressive, same base-line shit anyday.

Prometheus - Robot.O.Chan... Let's see. If I ever were to explain the term "when something grows on you" from my perspective, this album would be on the tip of my tongue. I bought this album after hearing Younger Brother - A Flock Of Bleeps, where I think Benji Vaughan really proved his musical skills and abilities. Naturally, I thought "so what could be better than a solo album?" To my immediate disappointment, I didn't like the album. None of the tracks stuck to my mind, I felt it was tedious and uninspiring, I couldn't relate to any of it other than a few good parts in some of the tracks. However, after a while, things started to change. I picked the album back up, and suddenly I found myself really enjoying the track "Samothraki". It had groovy bass lines, great melodies, and samples from the character HAL-9000 in Kubrick's audiovisual masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey".. All this made the track a periodical favourite. I was relieved, because I had found at least one good track. I decided to make a little effort. After more listening, I found myself listening to several of the tracks more and more. Today, Prometheus - Robot.O.Chan stands out as an amazing album, I really enjoy it, but it took its time. Almost two years! Maybe as my musical taste evolved, this album became some sort of stepping stone. It almost feels like it's a one-hour journey into musical intelligence. Not to over-analyze it too much, I have to say this is a spicy meatball. This album does remind me of "A Flock Of Bleeps", not too surprisingly. Some of these distorted sounds, baselines and syntheshizzling noises are truly unique to Prometheus' style, and a handful of tracks are actually very good. It's an excellent foundation for the solo works of Benji / Prometheus, as I think this album is really a breath of fresh air. The two best tracks have to be "U.R. Beautiful", and "Robot.O.Chan". Turn the latter up on loudspeakers with some decent bass-capabilities, and you'll feel your hind-part vibrate along with the entire room in an amazing resonance. This track could probably win you over from the get-go. If not, me for a free demonstration. BYOB.

Damn, I sometimes wish it was possible to confront the people whose comments had made you purchase an album. Somewhere I read someone refer to this as "Prometheus put out a master piece" and I bought the album solely because of this gutsy line!

That's taking it far, isn't it? Sure, Prometheus got lots of ideas and track 5 Samothraki IS nice, but from there to master piece? I guess, I understand you if what you want is very crowd pleasing, teasingly simplistic, darker full on. But then ... how often do I want that?

I won't say a bad word about this piece of plastic cause somebody loves it. But in my opinion, you can get this type of music darker, evil'er, and far more daring, if you want. Rinkadink's Rabbit From Farside, comes to mind. But scroll off one layer of psychedelia madness from Rinkadink and you got a pretty good impression of what Prometheus is about. Trippy friendly, wall of sound approach, easy takeinable, and hard not to forget.

... and Samothraki is a fucking mind stomper at the right moment with these creepy "Space Odyssey 2001" H.A.L. "I feel much better now, I really do" comments.