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Title: Will the real DJ Spooky stand up?
Review: Though I'm always looking for interesting, innovative electronic music, I have resisted DJ Spooky for a while. Mainly because what I heard from him prior to Riddim Warfare sounded like someone tuning their ham radio while practicing their bass down the hall from any microphones. But (his pompous theorizing aside) I wanted to like him. And I figured Riddim Warfare might be my window into his work. It was on a major label. Hell, he was even working with rappers. Well, unfortunately, Spooky's still a work in progress. Despite a few interesting tracks, Riddim Warfare is all over the place. It's drum n' bass, it's Brazilian music, it's underground rap, it's reggae, it's pompous theorizing! All of this with no strong unifiying purpose. And unfortunately, he still drops into that annoying "illbient" vaporousness. I'm all for artistic diversity. But until Spooky develops some consistency to his work, he will just seem like he's genre browsing.
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