V/A – Agave Nectar Vol.1 / 2007 Agave / 13 Tracks / http://www.agaverecords.com / Reviewed 24 Ferbruary 2007

The opening track to “Agave Nectar Vol.1” is Jay West’ “How Funky”. This track relies a little too heavily on repetition to get some momentum for this disc. The song is about at the seven and a half minute mark, and does not change up the styles used in it enough to provide this mix with enough energy to make individuals wish to keep tuning in. The rest of the tracks on “Agave Nectar” are sufficiently short and use enough mixing of styles and approaches to keep individuals listening to the disc. While there is repetition during Matt Shrewd’s “Need Ure love”, there are samples from other songs and the track is nearly four minutes shorter than Jay West’s introduction. The use of a girl-group sample during this track provides Shrewd with differentiation enough to make eir track the disc’s first success.

Formidable Force’s “Zip Jumper” is a track again has a solid backbone of instrumentation repetition to fuel the track, but shifts sounds and styles a number of times during the runtime of the track. It seems after the minor amount of stumbling out of the gate, that the rest of the artists on “gave Nectar” succeed in providing racks for individuals to zone out to or to dance along with. For individuals that are a fan of experimental or off-the-wall music, the songs on “Agave Nectar” may not provide the right type of release. The songs on here are geared for those individuals that appreciate a good trance or dance mix, and the songs are on the above-average end of the output associated with those genres. While there may be a number of vocals on any of these tracks, the dominant feature of tracks on “Agave Nectar” has to be the instrumental compositions.

The arrangement of these compositions is essential for the tracks to succeed; something that merely repeats itself is not going to get as much acclaim as something that makes listeners think (such as Manuel Tur’s “B-Tone”). Agave Nectar provides individuals with something that they can zone out to. This is the inaugural disc for Agave Records, and here’s to hoping that more of this line of compilations are released in the next few years. I know this is not the type of music I usually like listening to, but the quality of the talent on this disc is solid enough hat I can give Agave Records grudging respect for this release.

Top Tracks: Bryan Jones / Change The World , Matt Shrewd / Need Ure Love

Rating: 6.2/10

[JMcQ]