Commercial Dance at Its Worst. (Live Cream - Cream)

Member Name: little devil

Product:	Live Cream - Cream
Date:	09/07/01 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: hm listenable

Disadvantages: mixing, songs

Having purchased Cream Anthems 2001 I was only too happy to part with my hard-earned cash for this album when it was released in May. Now when reading this opinion you must bare in mind that I am not a fan of ‘commercial’ dance and in fact hate most of the cheese that is in the charts and passes for dance music. This girl is a real hard house chick. Yet I do like some of the more mellow music that was hot at the time of release. It can’t be all bang bang you know!

Cream have a reputation of being a big and up to the minute club, with previous album releases being very good, if not a little commercial, with brilliant mixing and flowing songs. They have a whole range of top quality merchandise so it’s like handing your money over to Microsoft I suppose, you know that you’ll get good quality with the possibility of a few flaws.

The Club…
Cream is a huge and very popular club, boasting sets from the likes of Sasha and Tall Paul. They have annual festivals, Creamfields, for which I have just recently got my ticket and I cannot wait until August bank holiday weekend! Situated in the heart of Liverpool (Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool City Centre) and strictly for the over 18’s this has got to be the go to club, even if it’s just to say ‘I have been there’. It will set you back £13 (£11 for members and NUS cardholders) so not an all round bad price for a top night out.

Seb Fontaine, Paul Bleasdale and Timo Maas are resident DJ’s at the moment, although this is constantly changing to meet the demands of the clubbing generation, this is definitely one place that boasts having their finger on the pulse.

The music…
Since there was a huge surge in the popularity of compilation albums from the big name clubs cream has been in on the act as it were. Look at the range by Gatecrasher and Ministry of Sound. Cream Live 2001 is the 11th in the cream series of al
bums, which all began with Cream Arrivals back in May 1999. They focus on the most poplar music of the time and include albums by Paul Okenfield and Seb Fontaine.

Cream Live 2001 was released in April 2001 on Virgin records.

Disc 1…
Track Listing:
I Wanna B U – Chocolate Puma
Bel Amour – Bel Amour
I Can Cast A Spell – Disco Tex
Muzak – Trisco
Chase The Sun – Planet Funk
Touch Me – Rui Da Silva
Mine 2 Give – Photek
Love In Traffic – Satoshi Tomiie
MuzikizuM (Part 1) – X-Press 2
The Question – Futureshock
Free At Last – Simon
Janeiro – Solid Sessions
Space Invader – Hatiras
Camels – Santos
You Are Alive – Fragma
Storm – Storm
Feline – Maurice
The Sound Of: Oh Yeah – Tomba Vira
Cried to Dream – Bullitt
Radiate – DJ Remy

CD 1 is basically house, yet is a big let down. I am a fan of house music but frankly this failed to deliver what was expected. It begins with what I feel was one of the worst songs of this year, ‘I wanna b u’ and as an opening song to the album what a let down. It is not mixed at all, not even attempted, it is basically the radio version of the song relayed as a poor opener. The mixing is quite honestly atrocious on this CD, as far as cream albums go I was very disappointed by the poor quality and mixing of the songs. It is not mixed together like a dance album should, I feel this CD was just put together at the last minute and the songs kind of merged together to class as being mixed. There are some fantastic songs on this side of the album, like ‘Chase the sun’ and ‘Touch me’ but still all round poorly put together, which is a huge shame.

I find that when I do listen to CD 1 I don’t listen to all the songs, I skip and pick the ones that I like the sound of. No
w I know that’s what most of us do, but on a dance album I generally listen to everything on the CD. I cannot do this with this CD, it’s far too patchy and frankly annoying in a sense. There were some class songs released this year, which would have been better placed on this CD.

This would please a lover of commercial house music and one who really just wants a string of singles, with a few different versions for variety. This CD did claim to provide for the people who like hard house, but believe me it doesn’t, not very up to the minute, I had expected it to be full of up and coming songs, not the big sellers of the last 4 months.

Full of big dance floor fillers and radio pleasers, such as the rather mediocre ‘We are alive’ which is alright to listen to but not a very good follow up to their previous singles, Fragma have deteriorated. Yet there are the better songs like ‘Touch Me’ and ‘Space Invaders’. However the order of the songs could have been pick a lot better, the CD just gets going and you are faced with a change of pace, not good when you’ve just got into the flow of the music.


Disk 2…
Track Listing:
Sputnik (Sputnik One) – Stylus Trouble
Special K – Placebo
Vegas – Agnelli & Nelson
Fly Away – Vincent De Moor
Stringer – Riva
Loving You – Marc et Claude
Played-A-Live – Safri Duo
Flesh – Jan Johnston
Flight 643 – DJ Tiesto
Strange World – Push
The Sound Of Goodbye – Perpetuous Dreamer
Transmission – Fast
Ghosts – Tenth Planet
State of Panic – Adam Dived
Sun – Slusnik Luna
The Vision – Mario Piu
Wack Ass M.F – Rhythmkillaz
Music Is Moving – Cortina
Operation Blade – Public Domain

Well the second CD proved to be full of trance with some of the biggest songs a
round, who hasn’t hear ‘Fly Away’ or ‘Loving You’. However in tune with the first CD it is extremely poorly mixed and the person who chose which versions of songs to put on it must have been having a laugh.

The whole album, not only CD 2, is ruined by the worst ever mix of ‘The Vision’ a brilliant song in itself but I don’t know what they did to it, the version of ‘Music is Moving’ somehow manages to out do this and is even worse.

Another let down, although I must admit I find this better to listen to than the first CD, it’s slightly better mixed and flows more freely. This is something I can listen to if in the mood for a little commercial dance. Not too bad but CD 2 is still a let down, I expected so much more from cream.

To say something nice they did a good thing by including ‘Operation Blade’ and choosing the original mix was the best idea of the album, a fantastic and pumping song, sadly the last on the album and you may switch off before getting there. With one less song than the pervious CD you might be more inclined to listen to this one first, I know I have this in my CD player a lot more than CD 1 and I don’t even like most of the songs on there.

If you listen to ‘Push’ then you might be a little strained to figure out what it is, the song is almost unrecognisable, and this follows a theme in the album, the songs that have been attempted to be mixed are done so poorly that they are hard to distinguish. A shame really.

Packaging…
A funky purple colour really attracted me to this album, apart from the reputation of cream and the quality of pervious albums. The plastic CD holder is covered by a cardboard sleeve, which has the cream logo on the front and the track listings on the back. There is then the usual CD packaging, which is a double CD, obviously. The CD’s themselves are also a funky shade
of purple, my favourite colour. If I were being nasty I would say this was one of the best things about the album…

Inside you are greeted with a booklet which contains information about the album, songs and club as well as some pictures of cream in Ibiza, their festivals and the night club etc. There is also a section of blatant advertising with their clothes and other accessories available to buy. To be honest I couldn’t be bothered to read the leaflet, the print was too small and the yellow colour was unappealing to me. Although I had a flick through and looked at the pictures, some of which were a little dodgy, like half dressed women!

Great and simple packaging, they haven’t felt the need to go over the top, pretty much like the rest of the album then.


Conclusions…
Well what can I say all around a major let down, it is not one of the best albums produced by the people at cream and it is full of commercial songs, which are not to my tasting. The track listings look quite impressive at a glance, if you get over the main stream theme of the album, and you are left thinking that despite this it might be a good listen after all. It is often the case that the mixes on an album can make or break it more than the actual songs included.

There seems to be no attempt at mixing on this album, with CD 2 being slightly better than CD 1. The CD’s do actually pick up and get a little better as you get towards the end, but the lack of flow, structure and thought make it difficult to listen to.

This is very disappointing and it is more like a ‘Now’ album than a cream one. Full of commercial pleasers and dance floor regulars, but nothing that really will get the blood pumping. All in all a rather average album. Although it will please some people I feel my £14.99 was wasted and would not recommend this to a lover of dance music, it’s more for the little kids who buy the
likes of Britney Spears and Steps (meow!).

I use this CD to either get ready to go out, when I am not concentrating on the music, or when I come in and my ears are ringing and I cannot really hear the music. Ok to unwind to after a great night out but better to be used as a coaster. Sorry cream but you have let me down.

The predecessor to this album was much better and if you are thinking of investing in an album like this, of around this time, I would recommend the Ministry of Sound’s Spring Annual over this.

Summary: