Tristan Eckerson - Dance Craze EP

Tristan Eckerson - Dance Craze EP
2013, Tristan Eckerson

Tristan Eckerson shows a sense of movement and energy on his debut EP, Dance Craze, which is all too often missing from electronic music.  Eckerson selects concepts to memorialize in music and creates theme-based variations that eschew melody and structure for form. Eckerson appears to be fully infatuated with the deminimus instrumentation evident on Dance Craze, and consequently gets in his own ways at times. 

Eckerson opens with "Life", a digitized dance vibe that takes the looping approach of electronica and combines it with the trance like undulations of contemplative New Age music. The result is not so much structure as it is form, with subtleties such as melody being more a suggestion than an actuality.  "Dance Craze" is cut from the same cloth, with a hint of melody-like glaze in the synth.   Eckerson closes with "Poly" brings tribal rhythms into play, but the music is otherwise unchanged. 

Tristan Eckerson does all he can to engage listeners on the Dance Craze EP.  Changes in tempo and dynamic are evident throughout the EP, but at the end of the day this is a fairly mundane listening experience.  Eckerson makes Dance Craze all about form over substance, but in the end there simply isn’t enough structure to hang onto.  In the end, Dance Craze is competent if unremarkable in approach and sound.

Rating: 2.5 Stars (Out of 5)