Despite a three-year gap since the last album, cEvin Key doesn't stray too far from the Download formula here: electronic dance music with a lot of atmospherics. The album straddles the line of requiring active interest quite nicely -- if you're interested in the soundscapes, there's a lot going on in the mix to hold you, but if you'd rather use it as a soundtrack to your workday or reading, it's unobtrusive enough to provide the perfect complement.
Sean Carruthers
All Music Guide
I am a programmer and banal ambient music helps pass the hours as I churn out volumes of tag-delimited documents and CGI code. Effector is perfectly banal ambient music: clever enough to be left in the CD drawer for a full spin - but nothing new, nothing mind-blowing and nothing that lives up to cEvin Key's previous efforts. Still the most lackluster moment on this disk is better than most of the crap that passes for ambient music. Fans of the Orb, FSOL, Plaid, and µuziq will appreciate Effector.
Two songs - the two most interesting songs on the album - break the "ambient" mold:
Vagator begins with a hilarious sample of some prankster calling into a radio talk show claiming to be a "demon." The opening notes of the song form a circus-like calliope melody which combined with the beat immediately made me think of the Insane Clown Posse. I imagined the Insane Clown Posse rapping over the music and it just about ruined it for me, but not completely.
Chrysanthemum, a "classic after-work jam," wades knee deep in the waters better known as cyber-funk, sounding more like a laid back Daft Punk jam than Download. It's a shame that a groove this good will get lost and forgotten amidst the ambient tracks.
Effector: the perfect soundtrack to a mundane and meaningless life. Sigh.
by Dan Century
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