#692 Jaga Jazzist - A Livingroom Hush

What was 90's IDM, after all, other than electronic music's version of free jazz? With its bending of time signature, melody and conventional wisdom, it represented a free, wild, incendiary reaction to he unts-unts-unts-unts 4-4-4-4s that largely defined electronica. Probably the most prominent fusion of jazz and IDM sensibilities was Squarepusher, mixing meticulous clockwork drill-and-bass beats with wooly, winding basslines, and this is an album that follows loosely in that vein.

Here, the fiery opening track notwithstanding, the spastic actually don't play all that prominent a role, but there is a glitch Ninja Tune sensibility that throbs behind every detuned note and warped structure. It's a jazz album at heart, but with a body rebuilt with technology, puppeteered by bungee baselines, throbbing with dystopian menace.

A darkly atmospheric album that needs to burst forth more often, too content to retreat into itself, too scared to live up to the promise of its opener, feeling stretched thin and filled in. It's a curse that befell Mouse on Mars circa Idiology and even Squarepusher himself, who never surpassed the mastery of his eponymous theme. These guys have some great ideas, some real jazz-worthy ideas, but maybe not quite enough of them to make an album really pop 3/5