Armand Van Helden: Killing Puritans : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Armand Van Helden's new record is either the most daring and confrontational house record of the century, or it's a cry for help. It may well be both. On Killing Puritans, Van Helden -- who's also one of the world's highest-paid remixers -- ricochets from death-metal disco (the Teutonic romper stomper "Little Black Spiders") to a crazed cyber-salsa house thumper called "Watch Your Back," which features veteran computer-jam freak Herbie Hancock, to the synapse-rattling paradiddle fest "Breakdancers Call," which sounds more like a Beastie Boys instrumental than a dance-club record.

The latter is a key moment: With Killing Puritans, Van Helden means to scramble and then reassemble house music like the Beasties' Paul's Boutique scrambled hip-hop in 1989. Like Paul's Boutique, Puritans initially seems chaotic and arcane, but with repeated dosage it starts to reveal itself as a pugnacious party album. You gotta admire the sheer nerve of this guy, especially on "Koochy," a track that's already enraging online house purists. He introduces the tune with a booty-music lyric ("I want that koochy, and I'll make it squirt," pledges Robo-Helden), then proceeds to scratch to death one of pop music's most famous riffs: Gary Numan's "Cars." But by literally tearing the old New Wave song apart, adding teeny-tiny electro interludes and then phasing key passages into oblivion, Van Helden performs the ultimate B-boy alchemy: taking a stinky old piece of vinyl and making it into a body-rockin' anthem that's as bold and funky as Coolio's hairdo. Killing Puritans may come to be known as the album that launched Gangsta House. (RS 846)

PAT BLASHILL