Thunderball: Ambassadors Of Style : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

People now fool with electronica the way they used to plug in guitars in garages. On Ambassadors of Style, Sid Barcelona and Steve Raskin of Thunderball draw on their backgrounds in the Washington, D.C., indie-rock scene (Raskin was a member of the band Edsel) and in graphic design, creating lucidly dubby tracks that recast the streaming structures of drum-and-bass and the buried flash of trip-hop. The conceit of the album is a sexy, secretive Washington of deep throats, crisp polo shirts, easy living and international panic. Tracks like "Prime Minister" and "Chronic Dose" are packed with cleanly funky grooves and haunting musical atmospheres; dazzlers like the pulsing "This Girl" and the panoramic "Sirocco" are sung with strung-out verve by Miss Johnna M. Ambassadors of Style expertly hits its marks without falling into easy secret-agent camp; that fact alone makes it stand out amid the current post-techno grass-roots glut. (RS 840)

JAMES HUNTER