Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Do you remember Rapture by iiO? I remember being thirteen, sitting on the floor of my room when it came on the radio. I got up and contorted my body in weird dance gestures. Body rolls. Booty shaking. All alone. But I loved that song. I could never remember the name, though, and would look for it online for the next few days. I finally found it and some of iiO's other songs, but nothing compared to Rapture. I was excited to learn that iiO was releasing a new album: Rapture: Reconstruction. This double-disc album has eighteen remixes of the classic 2002 song, Rapture.  It was not released on a full-length album until 2007, and this album is supposed to be the precursor to the new album which iiO has been working on for a year.

I thought that this would be like the 2007 edition of the album with some additional remixes of the classic song that made history. Unfortunately, I was wrong. It consists of eighteen mixes of the same track. I love the remixes; they're awesome. But honestly, who needs eighteen mixes of the same track? Don't get me wrong. There are some really great mixes. My favorite is the Aloud Remix on the second disc, because it is totally different than all of the other tracks. The second disc is also the better of the two as it contains eight “classic” mixes of Rapture and features some of the best DJ’s in electronic history including Paul Van Dyk and Armin Van Buuren. This is also the better disc, because most of the tracks are different from the others. Ohe first disc, however, many of the remixes sound very similar. Fortunately, this allows each track to easily lead into the next, but it is like listening to two hours of one long techno trance without any different kind of beat or rhythm -- until you get to the second disc that has totally new approaches to the song.

But seriously, they should have picked the best remixes and added a few new songs to whet our appetite for the new album. Eighteen tracks of the same song? It just became a headache (and a bore) after the fourth remix, and it was really not fun to listen to the 2002 hit, Rapture, for over two hours with no change.