With his album "Path of Pathos" Phacelift aka Kostas Alekoglou presents nine tracks of a progressive and minimal type, stylistically varying from morning sound to techhouse and trance. A large portion of grooving beats with a light breeze of monotony create an atmospheric deepness with completely own character. Discreet melodies and precisely but cautious used samples transform to creatures with color pencils in their hands that turn your visions into pictures. Without exception the tracks are persuasive and don't spare with steady new motivation boosts, always placed at the right position. At anytime you're aware of Kostas' experience he gained with other projects and he uses it to create worlds to dive into with his homogenous and smooth sound. Close your eyes and step into it.

Favorites: 2, 6, 9

M. Scherer (PlasticAge)

Kostas Alekoglou, formerly known as half of Magus, is going solo after splitting from his ex partner quite a long time ago. Phacelift is heavily influenced by the techno scene, and we can hear this influence with this dark progressive album. Phacelift starts with a groovy progressive track, more morning orientated. The music style evolves little by little, and by the third track it is already becoming dark nocturnal music. The baseline is impressive, hard and pumping – very X-Dreamish in a way. The sounds gets more and more buzzing, demanding, and during the whole time surrounded by a massive night atmosphere. The music softens at the 7th track, with some tribal, groove and even pop aspects. The samples are funny, different than the usual drug related sample you hear in trance.

Very recommended album, especially for those who thought psychedelic night progressive music was dead. It is alive and well kicking!

My rating: 9/10.

Candy (Isratrance Team)

Remember Magus? You know, that marauding project we’ve all heard before on the Creamcrop and Flow Compilations? Well, to those of you who don’t remember, let us remind that Magus are Kostas and Chris, two friends who made a lot of noise, but never released an solo album, unfortunately. Today, years after parting ways and experimenting in different musical paths, Kostas Alekoglou is slapping on a vicious turn from the Magusesque line, and presents us with his debut solo album, Path Of Pathos. What can I say? All in all it is a treat. The album kicks off with the progressive title theme, which sometimes injects those little unexpected melodies, which makes you feel good every time. After the second track’s kickdown, Kostas moves on to the leading motif in the rest of the album, the kind that swerves from tech trance to a groovier bassline, and everything, always, is under a hallucinogenic wrap, just like the book says. In general, Kostas is making a superb use of samples and melodies, and gives us a groovy-plus serving of progressive tech-trance, some XV-Kilist, Ticon, SBK kind of mesh and some change. In general, some power surges occur between tracks, and eventually it seems as if every track should’ve been placed on it’s own.

Ariel (Layla Magazine)

The CD opens with a sweet melodic, housy enhanced tale which is later gradually ignited and wonders into more darker, minimalist, industrial scapes. Whether we slide through more technoish, housy, progressive... corridors the atmosphere as a whole is spiced by a chunky, clubby bouncy baseline which serves as the main catalysis, adding an indoor minimalist taste. The style can be best described as a crossbreed of minimal progressive psytrance, club & techno which performs as the lead.

Homsy (Psymag)

Path of Pathos is a true Candyflip release: deep and throbbing. Path of Pathos is intelligent trance music that carefully explores the structure and style of minimalism. Here psychedelic intensity is created through space
where each sound and each melody leads carefully into the next. Like an introspective acid trip, Phacelift take the listener on a journey through and beyond the subconscious.

FB (Upfront Magazine)

The debut album of Kostas Alekoglou, formerly half of Magus (remember Digital Silence anyone?), this is the first I have heard from this solo project. It is a pleasant meander through slightly techy-edged progressive. Featuring a number of rather curious samples, and pleasant arrangements the stand-out track has to be the awesomely named ’Yippie Hippy Shake’ which just winds on and on. This is all pretty minimal stuff, but very very groovy and will work very well on the more progressive dancefloors I am sure. There are harder things on offer here as well though with the insistent and fairly dark ’Synaesthesia’ and the twisted melodies and samples in ’Delay Lama’ which is another great tune. All in all pretty cool for the prog and tech heads among us and a promising first album.

Tom Anteater (Revolve Magazine)

Kostas Alekoglu, together with Chris Igneous Sauria formed the Magus project with which they had conquered dancefloors worldwide, following his many years of experience in music production now releases his own path. With a crystal sound balancing between minimal techno and progressive psy trance he presents a club perspective in his compositions that are very well constructed but what is missing is the element which will excite all of our senses.

Haris P. (Freeze Magazine)

The first album we will be looking at is by Phacelift who is a Greek Producer and the name of the album is called Path of Pathos.

On the album are 9 tracks which are written and produced by Kostas Alekoglou.

Kostas together with another guy where the Magus, a project that went quite well a few years ago.

Since then Kostas has released records on many labels like Database,Creamcrop and others.

The music on the album is psy trance with a lot of progressive techno elements.

In our days music has become a hybrid with all styles crossing each other.

I will be going thought some of the tracks just to get a general idea of this project.

1.path of pathos.

The album starts with the track that the whole album got its name from.

It starts of with some vocal sampled over congas which the introduce to the tracks a nice and heavy kick. After a few beats the baseline is mixed in and then you realise that this is strictly a progressive track. To the track are added some saw fate in/fate out effects and with the vocal samples that he is using, even thought that the track is quite minimal, it keeps you interested. Some small breaks every and then fate inn and out some strange sounds which make it a winner on the dark site of the scene.

This is a tracks that was made with a lot of elements. Nice for an opening prog/psy set.

3.The new u.

This track is quite special and smartly made.

It seems like Kostas likes to use a lot of voices and samples from TV shows/speeches and what ever he can find in front of him cause all tracks have some vocals or parts of speechesand which most of them sound familiar but I just can not put my finger on.

The tracks starts with a speech that advices people to start exercising and stop taking heroin cause that is a factor in the new u.

After the fate out of the speech a really heavy base line starts off with a very high frequency high hut and a base line that reminds me of the hard house tracks we use to get back on 1996-2000.Really punchy.

Kostas here changes the pattern of the base line after a few step s and with some nice and strange effects he mixes inn more percussion which makes the track quite aggressive just to drop you in to a break.

During the break we get familiar with some really psy area effects and sounds until the track kicks in with some bass elements which with some saw bass lines make it a rocker for even your bedroom.

5.Synaesthesia.

This is what I would play out.

A slow builds up from the first bar. A lot of techno elements and twisted synth sounds together with a percussion that will drive over you.

This track shows the talent of Kostas, he builds up all the elements slowly but surely introducing new sound and percussion.

The build up leads the track to a break. From the break, that has nothing to give except from a high-pitched effect, the count down to the end starts by taking out all the elements.

Although a very minimal track it will do lots of hard damage to any big room.

We just love it.

9.True love.

Nice elements but it just does not do much.

Not the best track on the album.

I found it a bit boring to be honest.

After a chill out guitar sample the percussion kicks inn and once again Kostas tries to slowly build it up and down but is just the same over and over bass lines and elements which the way he used it make a bit boring.

Not much happening there.

In general lines I have one thing to say.

If you like psy sounds with a lot of dark progressive elements just go and buy this album. You have nothing to lose but you will have a nice album of the kind put to your collection.

To be honest I have been quite impress. The tracks do not sound the same and the elements he is using re quite different in every occasion, this shows that it has been put a lot of work and effort in to this album.

In my opinion the tracks can work quite well in a big club but also in you bed room if you are a fan of the kind.

Hopefully we will see some more releases from Phacelift and hopefully next weeks review on candyflip records will be as good as this one.

Written by: Harry White, aka Harry (http://trance.nu)