Album Review
It's all too easy to slot instrumental electronic albums into neat little subcategories. Exotic world music instruments with heavy dance beats? "Tribal techno," right over here. Jazz soloists playing over synthesizers? Go stand over there under the sign that says "acid jazz." Brazilian rhythms mixed with lazy electronic billows? Um, okay, let's call you "electro-nova." This obsession with assigning slots to everything is a huge part of what makes newcomers and non-fans dismissive of the style as a whole: clearly, the records must actually be fairly interchangeable once they're categorized. That's definitely not the case with Polarity 1's Speechless, which is a big part of what makes this such an enjoyable release. All of the above elements are to be found here, occasionally within the same song, along with the clever, rhythmic use of found-speech samples and a wider variety of arrangements than usual, ranging from '70s-style fat slap-bass lines ("Blues for Chucky," "The Sumo Glide") to more abstract soundscapes built of cut-up rhythms and pealing saxophone solos ("Land 'O' Debbies"). It may not be easy to categorize, but with its inventive rhythms and wide-ranging choices of instrumentation, Speechless is thoroughly entertaining.
