Consumer Guide Album

DJ Bootsie: The Silent Partner [Ugar, 2006]
"Downtempo," "chill-out," even "trip-hop"--different ways to say "boring" for most of us, and long past modish as well. But, like DJ Shadow and not many others, the musical mastermind of Hungary's Yonderboi crew likes guitars and orchestral sounds and even melodies. He also has an intuitive-seeming sense of pace and structure that's probably as calculated as all hell and may be an illusion as well. Doesn't matter. This moody soundscape moves, hitting you with difference before you know what hit you. Like all DJs, he scratches too much, but like Kid Koala (there is no higher praise) he can make you grunt doing it--as in the last few minutes of "Across the Opium Den." A-