Destructive Edit

Mostly the work of one Theodore Feyder, a studio wunderkind who plays guitar, bass, and all manner of vintage keyboards and synthesizers, Destructive Edit balances the Ubiquity label's emphasis on live musicianship with Feyder's programming and overdubbing capabilities. The focus is nominally on the beefier end of trip-hop, with a sound indebted to spy/blaxploitation soundtracks, techniques straight from dub legends, and an attention-span deficit that puts it in line with quick-draw turntablists. The highlights here ("Outer Limits," "March of the Ants") are chock full of drum breakdowns, samples flitting in and out of the mix, three or even four different melody lines within the same song; basically the work of someone who treats his productions more like a DJ on the turntables than your average artist at the mixing board. Imagine Afrika Bambaataa not only mixing the records, but recording the elements he's going to use in the mix, and you begin to get a good picture of what Feyder does here. It's a cinch these songs aren't going to get boring, but just in case there's any danger, genre pieces like the Latin tinge on "El Niño's Revenge" and "Matt's Blues" lighten the mood. ~ John Bush