Strategy

Albums
Bird Show
CacheFlowe
Caroline
Considerate Builders
Dday One
DJ Olive
Dub Tractor
Jimmy Edgar
Exillon
Four Tet
Guitar
Halma
Landesvatter
Don Limpio
Mariel Ito
Matinée Orchestra
Maximo Park
Mikkel Metal
Ms. John Soda
Music A.M.
Naing Naing
Nightmares On Wax
No Move. No Sound
Pillow
Ghislain Poirier
Prefuse 73
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Rec_Overflow
Mike Shannon
.tape.
Wechsel Garland
Zucchini Drive

Compilations/Mixes
Check the Water
Futurism Ain't Shit
Idol Tryouts Two
I Love Techno
Kiki
Machine Drum
Steve Porter
Satoshie Tomiie
SRL
Quality Elect. Music

3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs
aitänna77
Jonas Bering
The Blow
Cepia
Clipd Beaks
DaFluke
Direwires
Drop the Lime
Florent
Honig/Packard
Infinite Scale
Midwest Product
Mufo
Office-(R)6
The Orb/Rice Twins
saidsound/Krilll.minima Scorn-Fury
Solenoid
Miles Tilmann
K F Whitman
Why?

The Considerate Builders Scheme: Exit to Riverside
Combination

On Exit To Riverside, Cape Town, South Africa resident Justin de Nobrega trades in his Seven Ark IDM style for the tightly wound instrumental hip-hop of The Considerate Builders Scheme. Though the disc's material might remind some of Timbaland and The Neptunes, the album is more heavily indebted to the loping hiccup-funk of Prefuse 73 and Dabrye. But if de Nobrega's tunes are reminiscent of their work, he brings his own fresh spin to the music's slippery head-nodding bounce. Throughout the album's eleven cuts, heavy bass lines burrow and bleep, backbeats slam and slide, distorted voices croak, and strings hypnotically cycle.

What ultimately recommends the set above all else is de Nobrega's ear for detail. There's almost an Arabian swing to the strings in “We Got It Down,” for example, while skankily plucked guitar figures lend a bluesy slant to the blunted “And Five.” Even better, listen to the interstitial voice inhales he slyly works in between cowbell accents and clapping beats during “Three Beats Short.” Admittedly tracks like “Back Space” are so close to Dabrye's style, Mullinix could sue for copyright infringement (“Riverton Road” might well be the mutant first cousin to One/Three's “Hyped-Up Plus Tax”), but the observation prompts an even more curious thought: Given the visionary caliber of Dabrye's material, why haven't more artists succumbed to his influence?

March 2006