D:Fuse – People_3: Both Sides of the Picture.Live

Don’t Mess With Texas

They claim everything’s bigger in the Lone Star State. In some sad instances, the maxim applies even to things you wish it wouldn’t. Case in point: The latest mix from Texas DJ D:Fuse. Starting with the title — People_3: Both Sides of the Picture.Live — everything about this release is a good idea that eventually succumbs under its own weight.A disc with a progressive-house mix from July 2005 features D:Fuse supplementing tracks with a live band. To the untrained ear, their fills blend seamlessly — and uneventfully — with the original product. D:Fuse stretches to the breaking point what someone like Z-Trip uses as on-stage punctuation. Overall, it doesn’t help a mix with few other saving graces (apart from a three-song stretch beginning with My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult).

A chill-house second half, taped at the Lift Room in Austin, Texas, is more interesting; note the late sequence with D:Fuse himself, Sue McGuiness, and Siavash Tehrani. Sonic extremes plague the mix here. First, a preponderance of wimpy vocals and horns threaten to push parts of the set into the realm of smooth jazz. Second, for a mix designed to gently bring people back to earth at the end of the night there are too many ghastly transitions, including dead spots between tracks which are nowhere near the same BPM; quick, seemingly forced segues; and missed opportunities to actually share beats and ambience.

File this under “guess you had to be there,” because whomever made the decision to release this mess sure was. People_3 suddenly lends credence to the theory that the term “Texas DJ” might just be an oxymoron.