From his base in Mainz, part of the German tech house triumvirate with Frankfurt and Mannheim, Butch was releasing music long before, ‘No Worries,' you know. Sure, that is his biggest track to date, but there have been plenty more tracky cuts for the likes of Trapez, Great Stuff and 100% Pure both before and since, even if they didn't quite catch the zeitgeist as well as did the aforementioned, simple, sample heavy house jam.
Like that track on Cécille, Eyes Wide Shut, (Butch's second studio album on his own imprint bouq.) relies heavily on sampling. But, rather than sample selectively and suggestively as per, say, Motor City Drum Ensemble, the German Turk does so overtly and gratuitously.
And the results are mixed: the second track, for example, has a recording of a children's playground looped in the background so explicitly that it makes for something far too creepily voyeuristic (if not predatory) as to be enjoyable - especially given the fact the track is called ‘Kids' - whilst next effort ‘A Positive Thang' also eventually grates courtesy of the male ‘right-on' vocal which is repeated ad-nauseum from start to finish.... in 2010 there's just no need for such naff, mindless and meaningless signifiers. If house is a feeling, let me feel it, don't ram it down my throat.
What's more, how you get from such generic stuff as a ‘right-on' chant to socio-political slights in one album is a mystery. Still, Butch does, and ‘Under Satan's Authority' is a 90 second, slashed and trashed George Bush monologue ("I was trained by Al Qaeda / I am weak and materialistic" he is manipulated to say) which is nothing more than a cheap shot at the most mundane and easy target and, frankly, is the sort of obvious political observation even the most brain dead member of the proletariat can muster. It's neither inspirational nor insightful and is sorely out of place on a collection of otherwise unassuming, slick and charming dance floor workouts.
Those issues aside, then, (they blight but three tracks out of a whopping 17 overall) there is plenty of stuff on Eyes Wide Open worthy of closer attention: the salt-shaker drums, genuinely emotive and tinkling keys of introverted 4/4 charmer ‘Amnesia Haze', for example, or the unashamedly bouncy chords of retro house romper ‘Hippopotame'. Hell, though rather a curveball come the end of a largely 4/4 album, the Mediterranean vibes of ‘For Her Smile' with its meandering, finger-plucked acoustic guitar even sound nice as they escort you through the final moments of the record. It's nuances like that which give Eyes Wide Shut its personality, and which keep it from becoming another greyed-out, middle-of-the-road tech house tossathon.
In amongst the many samples, stylistic displays and illustrative vocals, any under lying message rather gets lost and diluted over the course of this album as a whole. But that the parts largely outweigh the whole is no bad thing, and at least they show Butch to be someone with plenty of ideas and the skill required to carry them off, even if some experiments work better than others.
