Consumer Guide Album

Material: One Down [Elektra, 1982]
Laswell, Beinhorn & Co. have obviously been listening to the radio instead of complaining about the end of the world. The result is a protean disco album that sounds like real New York rock and roll. Chic guitar and planet-rocking vocoders are only the beginning--several of these experiments seem designed to cross over right behind "Eye of the Tiger," and never have electronically processed rhythms throbbed with such life. All that's missing is a deeper feeling for singers and songs, an old problem that the finest and most atypical track suggests is remediable--Soft Machinist Hugh Hopper's "Memories," which guest stars Whitney Houston and Archie Shepp, transfers into one of the most gorgeous ballads you've ever heard. A-