AMG Review of We'll Never Stop Living This Way

John Bush
All Music Guide

Unlike many of the techno DJs and producers who made furtive trips into electro and big beat hoping to pay a few bills, Westbam had been spinning and recording breakbeat techno (of a sort) ever since the mid-'80s. Naturally, his breadth of experience gave him a leg up on most others, and as such, We'll Never Stop Living This Way is a solid album of forward-thinking retro-techno. It's as much a mix album as a production album, with most of the tracks blending into each other, capped off near the end by the irresistible one-two punch of "Wanna Get My Smurf On" and "Beatbox Rocker." Elsewhere, the Westphalia Bambaataa meets the original Bambaataa on "Agharta, the City of Shamballa," and a heavily processed vocal sample leads the way through the up-tempo electro-techno of "Terminator." At times, Westbam works the inevitable big beat formula into the ground; "Hard Times" is a rather bland pastiche of the break from Run-D.M.C.'s "It's Like That" along with the vocal sample from Kurtis Blow's "Hard Times." Most of the album, however, is a present-day vision of Westbam's fertile past.