Consumer Guide Album

Spring Heel Jack: Busy Curious Thirsty [Island, 1997]
What direct connection John Coxon and Ashley Wales retain to dance music is as obscure to me as their precise relationship to contemporary composition. But they mine both modes productively enough to cover over the pitfalls that are always tripping up nonbelievers. I love the way "Galapagos 3"'s slowly accreted minimalist detail is blown away by a brief blast of ersatz symphony, the way "The Wrong Guide" opens up a piece of small-group jazz for simulated drums and simulated . . . bassoon (?) to (simulated) pizzicato percussion, soundtrack orchestra, and anti-aircraft artillery--all of which continue the improvisation for a while. They're visceral where composition is cerebral and ambient is unmoored. They never fall for rock-techno's arena-scale gestures or art-techno's fatal conflation of thinking and mooning about. If any competitors out there can make such claims, their identities are obscure indeed. A