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(Musical Freedom)

Oh Tiësto! Isn’t it tiresome? Don’t you just get sick of staring into the black swampy mess of whatever non-descript hangar you turn up to before pressing the shiny play button’¦watching the tangling lump of sweaty limbed gurgling, gurning masses. A tragic pile-up of backward haircuts, dribbley faced youths chomping through their glow-sticks , tongues lolling and eyes rolling like a mass exorcism or Nuremberg sponsored by Fanta. The girl jiggling about at the front of the crash barrier, her pink mesh top sticking to her skin making her look like a giant gyrating ,pulsating prawn, you could be playing a World War II siren over and over again or a dozen ring tones each orchestrated to be more annoying and ear piercing than the last. Not that they’d know, not that they’d care.

Who cares that you were the first DJ to perform at the Olympic games or were the first DJ to play solo in a stadium for 12 days or something’¦where’s the respect eh? Are you forever doomed to be the soundtrack to the night Johnny thought snorting vodka would be a good idea? When will the velvet glove of destiny and fate grip you and take you away from the strip-lighting, hormone soaked, grotto and into the candle lit plush environs of a hushed backstage area? When will Madonna take your call? Or does she only work exclusively with angular-haired Englishmen?

What exudes sophistication and unexpected risk taking? What could introduce you to a wider, more music savvy audience? Or just an audience’¦one who might listen and contemplate and enjoy and show their appreciation by clapping and cheering, not bearing their breasts and making noises like choking Daleks’¦although that must be enjoyable in its own way of course. Collaborations, that’s what maketh the modern DJ, a DJ that can be heard on daytime radio just like that rat-featured David Guetta with that one from Destiny’s Child that’s not Beyonce or the other one’¦

Although Tiësto is not one for your common-or-garden collaboration, not for him the squeaky voiced poppet but rather a strange, deranged assortment of indie boy -celebs’, thus Kaleidoscope is a bizarre selection of tracks featuring the likes of Kele from Bloc Party, Tegan and Sara and Jonsi from Sigur Ros. You may think it’s a world gone crazy but this is music as marketing, all your favourite friends are all lined up to catch a bit of the Tiesto magic cache, the world-market advertising licensing domain -if ever there was a song created solely to soundtrack a car speeding past fields of blinking sub-hippy spawn it’s the title track, sweetly blurbed by Mr. Sigur Ros.

Clever boy that he is, Tiësto is not about to give his 1 million Facebook followers an excuse to accuse him of complete alienation yet, as for every cooing, slice of sub Oakenfold -alternative remix’ there’s a bit of plastic atonal vomit there to soak it up. These tracks are rather like contrived palette cleansers – there to make you think about Tiësto -the artist’ not just Tiësto the perma-tanned DJ monster coming to a town near you. Alas, it’ll take a bit more than a few slap-dash indie-dance numbers to convince the non-whistle owners to nestle your album in their collection mister’¦sadly it’s back to the barn for you.