Pro Audio

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It is always rewarding to watch an artist's development and marvel as he consistently exceeds even your loftiest expectations. From the visceral punch of his earliest records to the smart and lubricious Chicago groove-cum-Sheffield bleep excellence of last years Bedrooms & Cities, Landstrumm has remained a few steps ahead of any predictable trajectory, never failing to surprise with his sudden diversions from the projected path. Landstrumm's relocation to Brooklyn in 1997, concurrent with an exhaustive set of Stateside DJ dates, throws the most bewildering curves yet ones unforseen even in the light of 20/20 hindsight. Maybe it shouldn't come as such a surprise; Landstrumm has been quite vocal about the sad state of Millsian worship that currently dominates techno. And so, immersed in NYC culture with a laptop and a new package of audio tools, the sly Landstrumm has taken the tricks stockpiled during his learning curve as a techno wunderkind and applied them to the art of hiphop? It amounts to little more than a tease for now. While the DHR stable continues to confuse grime and squalor for authentic urban atmosphere, the Glasweigan jackmaster inexplicably taps into the real spirit of street science and skewers its heart with the wild, swooping tones and taffy-pull dynamics that define his craft. "Hardcore Gamer 3" nails all marks squarely, skulking around a foreboding Witchman/Wu-Tang melody with bone-crunching bass/breakbeat boots and pockets fulla jingling shells, its spray of rhythmic ricochet whines and synth hits lifted straight out of a video game. Landstrumm tables the hiphop moves for the rest of the album, concentrating instead on some of the subtlest and most satisfying floor tracks hes ever cut, but the ruff and gritty back-alley atmosphere spills over enticingly into the more "classic" Landstrumm material. "Tidal Wave Emulation" (nice use of the Macs boot-up sound - "sosumi?" - here) and the electro-tinged pair that opens Pro Audio ("Vectrex" and "Down on the A") take on a desperate razor-edge funkiness which polishes their icy loops to a gunmetal gleam. Equally arresting are "Bell-Huey (Blades Mix)," a spiraling techno tower of massive metal girders and Laibachian(!) tolling bells, and "Energy Flesh," Landstrumms brilliant homage to the Brooklyn/Belgium sound which started it all back in 1990. "The Sentinel" could get lost amid all this excitement, but its accomplished shifts between chasmic bass depths and high-pitched Cybotronics give it exactly the variety and personality which Landstrumm finds lacking in harder techno. How encouraging it is to find a musician willing to step off his soapbox and actually make a difference. The last tracks of Pro Audio mark Landstrumm's most baffling detour yet, delving headfirst into the mewling, comparative-concrete metamorphoses of natural and synthetic sound heard in works by Parmegiani, Xenakis and Bayle! Uh, . . . Neil? Certain to confound the jack-happy apostles of the G-Tech e-mail list, and just another of the brashly experimental kicks which make Landstrumm such a compelling figure.