Streamlines

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Suckled in the gay clubs of New York and Chicago, palaces where disco was king and hedonism ruled the music, house music was all about sexual abandon and the euphoria of rhythm, not about concept and art. Detroit techno had breached the wall between club culture and headphone culture early on; house was still trapped within the urban pleasure-dome. Techno swelled with confidence and, when it seemed that Detroit alone could no longer hold it, exploded outward. Its influence hit all points of the globe like a meteor shower. House music found commercial life in Europe while, on the homefront, Chicago's house producers retreated to the freedom of the underground, resurfacing in the late '90s with the Relief/Prescription/Cajual label triangle. The party aspect, now chiefly upheld by European mutations such as hardbag and garage, still dominated in the clubs. But the producers and players in Chicago also maintain a parallel tradition, one ascendant from the artful, emotional and stunningly musical house tracks of early Chicago visionary Larry Heard. Heard embodies the split personality of house and is unquestionably a godhead figure for new producers who face the "to jack or not to jack" paradox. Though the music's umbilical cord still connects to the clubs, these musicians are distancing house from its sweaty cradle and recasting it in the same light of refinement that introduced the dread "intelligent" prefix to the vocabulary of dance music. The major difference is that this is not symptomatic of a relapse into IDM's separatist pretensions. With Chicago house, sibling to its more cultured and erudite brother, Detroit techno, the complexity and culture has always been there, in the tangled lineage of Italian disco, R&B, gospel, synthpop and funk which is house's proud genealogy. Daniel Ibbotson belongs to a generation of young British techno producers weaned on a solid diet of Heard and such new-Chicago artists as Ron Trent, Chez Damier, Derrick Carter and Glenn Underground. On his second album, the mature, soulful sounds of R/P/C meet the reverent post-Detroit stylistics of their European disciples - labels such as Peacefrog, Open and Paper - with fewer of the electro deflections found on the Souped Up EP and New Stories. Ibbotson is a musician, not a jackmaster. He's willing to substitute resonance and depth for energy, form for force and melody for pelvic impact. All fair trade-offs when a "Venture" overrides the stubborn 4/4 preoccupation and stabbing refrains of Chicago house with looser percussion, layers of ticklish electric piano vamping and balmy little guitar riffs. Like Max Brennan or Kirk Degiorgio, Ibbotson borrows enough from fusion and funk to suggest the jazzy manners of Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock, Gato Barbieri, Airto Moeira and countless lesser-knowns without resorting to plagarism or disconnecting his music irrevocably from its true roots. Every so often, all of these seasonings and diversions overwhelm Ibbotson's house-ier inclinations and the spiritual link with Chicago is temporarily lost ("Freeze;" "Depart"). That's when Streamlines drifts into a category of groove shared by few of Ibbotson's peers and associated more often with a label like Pork, whose output is far too eclectic to be burdened with the historical baggage of Detroit or Chicago. These exceptions are testament to Ibbotson's skill as an original and promising producer. But it's still the more traditional pieces ("Straylight;" "Nova;" "Hi Rise;" "Circa;" "Numbers;" "North By North West"), underpinned with a solid, reliable beat and kinky bass and generously decorated with funk-guitar ornaments and bright synth passages, which are first to grab you and easiest to love.