M.A.N.D.Y.

Being asked to compile a mix for the Fabric or Fabric Live series of albums has become a rite of passage, confirming that an artist has had a significant impact on dance music. Yet, the best thing about the series is, first and foremost, how entertaining nearly every mix has turned out to be. According to my calculations, Berlin tech-house darlings M.A.N.D.Y. succeed with their entry about eighty percent of the time. This means that for nearly fifteen of its seventy-one minutes, your attention will be less-than-riveted by cutesy sci-fi effects, stale choruses, boring rhythms, or syrupy string sounds. Fortunately the rest of the time, they strike an admirable balance between novelty and repetition, ethereal musings and the "get physical" approach that gave their much-celebrated label its name.

DJ Yellow and Astrid Suryanto's "To the Top" (Guy J. remix), with its teasing alien vocals and epic bass-line, is the most mind-melting track. The way it is gradually displaced by the sun-struck vocals and tropical burn-out rhythms of Dubfire's "I Feel Speed" (Audion remix), represents the best moment of pure mixology. That marks the only essential stretch of Fabric 38, but for most of the album, the pleasing, kitschy grooves serve as a fine reminder of why clubbing can be such a good time--it's an undeniably social activity that you can participate in all night long without having to be coherent for a minute of it. —Nate Cunningham
02.27.08

M.A.N.D.Y. is the Berlin-based duo of Patrick Bodmer and Philipp Jung, a pair that has been working the German avant-club scene for years. Their contribution to the Fabric label's eponymous series is a weird and vaguely eerie set of techno funk that maintains a certain consistency of mood while drawing on quite varied material. Vocals are rare, and when they arise they tend to be weirded-up beyond recognition (check, for example, DJ Yellow & Astrid Suryanto's "To the Top (Guy J Remix)"), and while the beats aren't really house-derived they're not really anything else either. At times there are hints of reggae in the mix (poxyMUSIC's "War Paint (Claude Vonstroke Remix)", Booka Shade's "City Tales (Dub)"), and sometimes the beat itself gets slippery and almost queasy, as on both Decimal's "Idiosynkratik" and Lucio Aquilina's "My Cube" (which features some lovely bell tones). And a few tracks are vague in ways that tend to forfeit your attention rather than reward it. But overall this album is like a fine piece of abstract sculpture, one that attracts you in ways you can't really explain and that you can't stop looking at. Recommended. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide