Farther away from drum'n'bass and closer to big-beat techno (with a little turntablist mayhem thrown in), Amon Tobin's third album for Ninja Tune breaks out with a devastating opener, "Get Your Snack On." The track turns out to be just one of the highlights on Supermodified, a dense, plunderphonic kaleidoscope of an album with giant, noisy jazz breaks and groovy electronic synthwork. It's got quite a bit of the retro-sounding sampling of Permutation (orchestra strings, jazz combos, groovy ps...   [ read more ]

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With its surprising starkness and darkness, 1997's Homogenic shatters Bjork's "Icelandic pixie" image. Possibly inspired by her failed relationship with drum'n'bass kingpin Goldie, Björk sheds her more precious aspects, displaying more emotional depth than even her best previous work indicated.

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At its worst, drum'n'bass can dissolve into mood music of the worst kind -- an undifferentiated fabric of received beats and prefabricated synth textures designed more to produce a Pavlovian effect in the listener ("Hey, there's that hip sound that I'm supposed to like") than to provide any real musical pleasure. But at its best, drum'n'bass can be a playground of advanced rhythmic and harmonic ideas, one that appeals equally to the hips and the head. With NYC D&B, the quartet known as Droid has mana...   [ read more ]

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