Same Actor: Sharp Edges
Bip-Hop

Same Actor's (Chris Cook aka Hot Roddy) album debut Sharp Edges opens with the by-now familiar cut-and-paste strategies associated with laptop electronica but quickly veers into a unique zone inhabited by dulcimers and sitars as well as the more customary guitar. Cook repeatedly sculpts sampled acoustic sounds into arresting configurations, layering sitar lines over glitch-inflected reggae rhythms (“Nothing Yet”) and working them into Technicolour arrangements (“Red Yellow Porpoise”). Interestingly, the latter's bold splash evokes Plaid, while the Warp duo's trademark breeziness brightens “Dulcimer Scramble Suit”; elsewhere, the rather Plone-like “Squash” gets a boost from Jane Bartholomew's serene coo. In addition to the African juju flavour his guitar injects into “Morph,” Cook channels his inner Ravi Shankar on multiple occasions, nowhere more so than in the 27-minute real-time meditation “Deforestation” (with ragas sometimes extending from night to dawn, the length of Cook's piece is hardly off-putting though it is overlong). Such East-West fusions sometimes lapse into New Age banality but the harder edge Cook brings to material like “Hammer” and “Tread Carefully” generally allows his compelling 'world' project to sidestep that trap.

May 2006