Breakbeat Era: Ultra-Obscene : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Award-winning jungle maestro Roni Size is a master at matching angular, hyperactive beats to small bites of jazzy diva vocals -- without slowing down the double-speed syncopations or softening the subsonic bass booms that define drum-and-bass. With Breakbeat Era, Size, fellow producer DJ Die and singer Leonie Laws serve up an entire meal of memorable melodic sophistication that suggests European art songs' timeless drama mixed with rock's restlessness. Ultra-Obscene dodges convention: Its jerky polyrhythms retain the dense complexity of Size's bittersweet jams, and the album's catchiest lyric asks, "Now that you suffer from our disease/Will you understand me?" Growling, belting, spitting out attitude-heavy poetry with theatrical abandon, Laws rides every manic curve that Size and Die steer her way. Breakbeat Era suggest a punky android Liza Minnelli let loose in a virtual cabaret. (RS 825)

BARRY WALTERS