SVEN VÄTH FIRE ALBUM VIRGIN RELEASE: APRIL 2, 2002 REVIEW: MAY 6, 2002

Sven Väth is apparently very good at DJ-ing for 24 hours on end. Like many hyped up DJ:s of the early nineties trance scene, he just couldn't keep his hands off the actual recording of music, and ended up making a couple of bleak and superfluous records nobody seems to listen to anymore.
After touring East Asia, Väth now gives us another album, this time wholeheartedly dedicated to the club scene. And indeed part of the album is the kind of soulless pounding, that I imagine him endlessly boring clubgoers with. Strangely, though, the first single is all but clubby, a very unsexy rendition of "Je t'aime... Moi Non Plus" sung by himself and Miss Kittin of Miss Kittin & the Hacker fame. Accompanied by funny blips and blops, they radiate about as much eroticism as an average episode of Star Trek. With this exception, the tracks are mostly instrumental and a bit static in their exactitude and uniformity. Still, the nice mellow feeling of tracks like "Design Music" saves "Fire" from disaster.

MATTIAS HUSS