Disquiet

The music made by Chance’s End (aka Ryan Avery) is not standard Disquiet Downstream material. It isn’t remotely fragile, abstract or attenuated, and even though it eschews all but the most mechanically tortured of singing — words generally vocoded to the point of incomprehensibility, with the exception of some catch phrases — it follows standard song structure without fail. The songs are more Orb than Aphex, more Jan Hammer than Margaret Leng Tan, more Crystal Method and BT than anything else, pop tunes built from the stuff of rave music. But they’re also absolutely stuffed with surprises, like the abrasive riff running through “Totem Redux” (imagine a turntablist forced to make do with a set of rusty brakes on a junkyard car), or the X-Files-style submarine radar that opens “Platinum Prawn,” or the piercing electric-violin solo that erupts midway through the song. Avery’s violin is used to particularly strong effect on “Going On,” building with warehouse-party gusto, high on the enticingly vacuous drama. Cheesy? Perhaps, but at the height of popularity for the Polyphonic Spree and Flaming Lips, we’re long since past such concerns. Check out these free downloads, and others, off his recent Set Me Free album, at chancesend.com (click on the “media” tab — oh, and if there’s no evident link for the “Totem Redux” track, you can find the MP3 file here). These are theme songs for cop shows yet to be pitched.

By Marc Weidenbaum