Fingerprints Music

Reviews:

Before listening to Mark Farina's debut LP for the first time, it's important to remind oneself precisely what a DJ's job is in the clubs. For over the past decade, Farina has climbed to the upper echelon of Chicago house and trip-hop jocks by exhibiting both impeccable selection skills and a sure handed knowledge of dancefloor dynamics. Still, it's a reputation based on other people's records, so when it comes time to make music, Farina is more inclined to piece together some interesting bits and pieces from his record collection than write a song the whole world can sing. That's all that one can expect from Air Farina outside of a few oddballs samples from flight instruction albums scattered throughout the album as a running theme. So as long as one doesn't mind Farina's inbuilt creative limitations, one can find the ride Farina takes you on very pleasurable.

True to Farina's roots in Chicago, the tracks here are mainly minimal, with some soulful keys thrown in to evoke Farina's famed sets. Along the way, Farina ropes in cohorts like vocalist Sean Hayes ("Dream Machine") and San Francisco hip-hoppers People Under the Stairs ("Travel") to vary the tempo and test out this thing called songwriting. While hardly embarrassing, these tracks are hardly Farina's forte, as he hits his stride with two four-song mixes at the LP's beginning and end that at points rope in L.A. house producer Lance DeSardi ("Leaving SF") and Kaskade ("To Do") for two nicely structured slabs of slowly building funk. Like most DJ material, this album's shelf life is fairly limited, but for the dancefloor massive, this will do quite nicely for the next few Saturday nights.