Magazine Sixty Music Review with DJ Counselling

Greg Fenton reviews DJ Counselling – Speaking in Code

Acting as a tour guide into the depths of urban sprawl, traversing dark corners, becoming beacons of light as the age of shadows gives way to a flourish of hope. DJ Counselling’s proud new album is a supremely gifted hymn to city life and the act of being human within it. His craft feeds into the wealth of styles, sounds and imagination surveyed throughout, like charges placed to unnerve and soothe your senses as the music travels through an uncertain landscape defined by a lifetime of dangerous edges, then smothered by an air of joy and the warmth of moments of heartfelt memory. Maybe not quite so much of the latter, but every perceived second of the former certainly feels incendiary and entirely revitalising.

As the steps find their vocation, so does the accompanying beauty of the music, as warmer interludes have given way to provocation. Try the final number, the exquisite Kino Central, as contrast to the grainy silence of the broken No Light to Follow, as contrast to the intense drama generated by Subspace Echoes, then to the grasp of Breathing Underwater sequencing drum and bass breaks into the grinder. There is, as always with his composition, a sincerity of feeling combining with sheer depth, probing at the art of movement, never sitting still and is all the more needed and welcome for it. At each turn, music, atmosphere and emotions are explored and then translated into experience, each signifying different pathways on this particularly brilliant album of shining lights on not-so-easy dreams. Or to put it another way, it’s fucking beautiful.

Release: August 1
Download/Stream at Bandcamp
DJ Counselling Linktree