Artist: Paolo Mojo & Jim Rivers
Title: Darkplace
Label: Oosh Music
By: Andrew Bilen | 28 January 2008
Tracklist:

• A: Original Mix
• B: Rene Amesz Mix

Paolo Mojo & Jim Rivers "Darkplace"

Having brought together the three artistic minds of highly talented producers Paolo Mojo, Jim Rivers, and Rene Amesz for the third release on Paolo's Oosh imprint, I was waiting to check out this release with plenty of anticipation.

The original is a fun, upbeat house track with a strong, upfront bass line, backed by crisp percussion. 'Dark Place' is a pretty basic production that builds momentum and definitely makes you want to move. The breakdown also helps to provide additional depth, as it layers in new drums and elegant strings. It then builds back up with a really catchy synth element, backed by a mix of highly distorted rhythyms.

However, with Paolo Mojo and Jim Rivers both being excellent producers in their own right, I would have liked to hear something a little bit more developed and engaging. These days, whenever I see the name Jim Rivers attached to a track I set my expectations pretty high, and 'Dark Place' doesn't quite deliver. Even so, this duo manage to take the 'simple but effective' route and make something enjoyable of it.

Rene Amesz's take on 'Dark Place' isn't wildly different from the original, but rather just adds adds some extra spices to make it a bit more dark, dirty, and glitchy. The body of the original is left mostly intact, but Rene's remix utilizes some added tweaks, distortion and effects paired with some more refined percussion and beefed up EQing to give his take a much bigger, darker sound, in traditional Amesz fashion.

Although the cast was well selected, the end product just wasn't quite equal to the overall talents of these three producers. This release is a bit dissapointing in its lack of originality, but will still manage to put a smile on peoples faces.