Breakbeat Science's latest comp, Exercise 5, is almost like two different records. On the first, you have the rigidly quantized beats you'd get if you played your old electro records on 78 rpm. It's almost meta-mechanical, where every hi hat hit has equal emphasis, and you start thinking about the type of music robot DJs would be pumping for the bots on a dance floor. The apogee of this aesthetic comes when Beans busts into his alien-robot rap in Graphic's cut "I Am Metal." The lyrics are twisted and dark: everything you'd expect from Beans.

Then somewhere around Amit's "Motherland," the style starts to change. With his trademark rolling, menacing bass picking up the half-time groove, a more organic swing starts to predominate. It's almost like watching the evolution of a species (without the Social Darwinist crap of attaining perfection). By the time we hit Controlled Substance's "Smoking Man," we're dealing with a whole different animal. The hi hats are racing along, performing their complicated little pirouettes around the snares, and the bass lines are pumping in a deeper, dubbier groove. It's with Ezekiel Honig's "Love Session" that the album hits the peak of it's mechanical-natural fusion, with its organic found-sound rhythms, like a more dance floor friendly version of Aphex Twin's "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" (although without the chaos theory overtones).

As is nearly always true of d'n'b, the vocals are a liability (with the exception of Beans' work). Melting your brain with E, Foxy, or Ketamine almost guarantees that anything you see, from the sweat on your water bottle to the trails of your buddy's glow stick, is a religious experience. Any positivist lyrics about love, unity, and progress are gonna go down well, and you'll find them here. Kind of makes you miss the good old days of PCP, crack, and dirty acid. Vocals aside, DJ Clever puts together a slammin' mix, and if you're lucky enough to live in a city where people actually know how to dance to d'n'b, you'll want to pick this one up.
www.djclever.com
www.breakbeatsciencerecordings.com

Denis DesHarnais

Your name:

Your email address (required):

Your URL (optional):

Your constructive criticism:


Type this code into the box below:

 Past Constructive Criticism

rose posted the following Constructive Criticism: Please don't be offended by this msg but I would like to know more about your personal life. When I saw your picture I almost fell of my seat. You are the splitting image of someone I know. Are your parents from Chicago or New York ?