DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
Subliminal Minded — The E.P.
(Outpost/Bar None)
DJ Spooky vs. the Freight Elevator Quartet
File Under Futurism
(Caipirinha)
DJ Spooky has made a career for himself as fabricator of chaotic sonic collages, and he’s too sloppy (sonically and philosophically) to ever be mistaken for someone who obsessively slaves over a recording. His new EP is anything but fastidious, what with its familiar samples (phaser fire, modem buzz) and haphazard stereo sweeps. Beneath the chatter are some righteously distracted drum’n’bass and some thumping aural montages. But his attempts at dub are too stolid to swing, and his arrangements for rappers don’t justify why these voices, alone among the album’s elements, remain un-tweaked. Spooky needs someone to keep him on track, which is why he’s so suited to an extended team-up along the lines of his collaboration with the Freight Elevator Quartet. The quartet mixes acoustic (cello, voice, djembe and, yes, didgeridoo) and electric (synths, sampling, software) with enough variation to keep Spooky interested and enough consistency to lend the album coherence. File Under Futurism is exactly the expansive, endlessly explorable soundscape that Spooky wishes his solo releases were. The foursome grooves on his penchant for noise, and he explores their hodgepodge instrumentation like a Kid with a complicated new toy.
This was originally published in the March 2000 issue of Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine. I gave Subliminal 2.5 stars (out of 5) and File 4 stars (out of 5).