Tektonics
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Description
From a distance, electronic dance-music producers and hip-hop turntablists might appear simply to be located at different points along a shared continuum, and elaborate plans shouldn't be necessary for them to meet. However, when the emotional temperatures joined at the meeting are hot and cool, the result can be either a curious sensation of both or merely lukewarm. This CD takes tracks by well-known drum & bass and other electronic artists, and it hands them over to leading turntablists for scratching and mixing. In some cases, such as Photek and the Scratch Perverts, anyone who is not already a fan of both parties is not likely to have their head turned around, whereas the recipe of Meat Beat Manifesto and the Herbaliser creates a more integrated result. Wagon Christ's Luke Vibert often uses the humorous or ironic vocal samples that many turntablists favor, so the spoken bits from an audio engineering instructional source spread across his track with DJ Rob Swift could have come from either camp. Some of the contributors from the producers side have a foot in hip-hop to begin with (Ming and F5), and some (Soulstice and DJ Curse, Propellerheads and DJ Craze) hit a big beat stride that smoothly combines everyone's skills. J-Boogie and DJ Imperial present a modern electro track that evokes the epochal juncture of studio electronics and hip-hop DJ'ing in New York in the '80s--where it all began, in a sense. --Bob Bannister
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