Album Review: Various/Alison Wonderland - Welcome To Wonderland

10 May 2012 | 5:00 pm | Kris Swales

Welcome To Wonderland confirms suspicions that a star has been born...

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Alison Wonderland was the crowd favourite when she stepped up to the decks at the final of EMI's She Can DJ talent scouting program in 2011, so few were surprised when she was offered a contract despite not taking out the major prize. The Sydney DJ's flair for leaping across genres points to a production career which will be well worth following, but first up is the Welcome To Wonderland mix – a showcase for her genre-hopping talents, but which never quite gets your jaw dropping like you know it could.

Across 19 tracks, Wonderland deftly leaps all over the shop just as she would in the club, with moves from halftime rave-step to reggae-tinged drum'n'bass through hip hop and big beat, all undertaken in the blink of an eye – and that's just on an opening salvo, taking in cuts from Alex Metric, Major Lazer, 360 & Gossling (as remixed by Wonderland herself) and classics from Arrested Development (People Everyday) and The Chemical Brothers (Galvanize). From here she settles into a more conventional 4/4 groove, tipping her hat to the strength of the local scene with the Frames remix of Lancelot's We Can Dance, Flight Facilities' Foreign Language and Beni's faux piano bomb Opulence before veering back towards bass music territory on the run home.

All the ingredients are there but at times the programming is a little haphazard, Wonderland also erring on the side of caution by letting tracks play out when a little more mixing creativity may just have kicked things up the required notch. Welcome To Wonderland confirms suspicions that a star has been born, but you suspect it'll be on forthcoming releases that Alison Wonderland will truly shine.