Album Review: Illusions - Mikas

Totally unrelated to the well-known Mika, Mikas doesn't create campy hit pop music and instead prefers to focus on progressive trance instrumentals made for sunrises on open dance-floors.

BlackPlastic dislikes Mika (sans the 's') so much that almost anything else would be preferable. Illusions - a pleasant surprise then, even if that isn't saying much.

Illusions is actually alright, kinda, provided slightly ambient trance is your thing. It may fall slightly awkwardly down the gap that exists between the cheesy-Radio-One-playlisted-glowsticks-and-dance-anthems-chart-bothering Deadmau5 and a somewhat more sophisticated minimal tech-head like Gui Boratto but there are some moments here if you are prepared to sift.

Opener 'Spirit Emotion Part 2 (Extended)', (and yes, BlackPlastic is very aware of the unironic shitness of the title) is a brooding builder made of twinkling keys and mechanical basslines. 'Haze (Superclub Mix)' is, again, brooding and progressive with enough stabs of acid to make it stand out.

The problem is that Illusions doesn't really do anything new. At all. For every track the manages to capture the listener's attention there is another that passes by without you so much as noticing. So if you loved the slower, ambient stuff that Digweed and Sasha used to play ten years ago then you may find sething you enjoy but for the rest of use there just aren't enough ideas here.

BP x

P.S. Illusions has the worst album cover ever. Like so bad BlackPlastic couldn't face tainting the look of the site with it. Seriously.