Super-Sonic Jazzy Session

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If you subscribe to the gospel of LTJ Bukem, ambient drum n' bass has to be a soggy and squishy affair with as much depth as a sidewalk rain puddle. Cai Bojsen-Møller, a relatively quiet figure behind Copenhagen's Multiplex label, probably wouldn't call the music on his 'Super- Sonic Jazzy Session' "drum n' bass." But, like other members of Multiplex's techno-elite cadre, especially Ian O'Brien and Steve Pickton, his unerringly sharp programming uses flashy breakbeats in a creative way which sometimes veers so close to jungle-ground that the jungle/not-jungle debate comes down to an academic judgment call. Bosjen-Møller has that exquisite and uncanny Scandinavian feel for frosty but hale melodic inventions ("M&P") - in spades - and gracefully offsets passages of almost aching sweetness with muscular rhythms and jazz-schooled tweakings ("Super-Sonic Vision") or a jolt of hiphop-fortified sinew (the stomping and shattering "Reel Things") . He has encrypted his secret formula for the Bojsen-Møller "Sound of Joy" within two of Super-Sonic Jazzy Session's titles: "Swinging Machines" and "Easy Does It." Nothing is rushed - not even the sublime classical-candyfloss interlude of "Talkin' Silence" or the flowing intro of "GA Part 1&2" (both comparable to the euphoric ambient creations of a fellow Dutchman, the Double-Muffled Dolphin, Peter Fjeldberg). As for those "swinging" machines, transitions drop into place with a curious combination of meticulous mechanical syncopation and human free-handedness, always unpredictable yet so immaculately "right." A distressing number of far more acclaimed techno artists should bow their heads in shame upon hearing the humbling "Evidence" of the magic which Bojsen-Møller can work with a solid bassline and a smattering of crafty breakbeats or the fluttering arpeggios and countermelodic sax woven expertly into the bass-grounded rhythms of "Swinging Machines." There's no excuse for much of the elementary pap which they paw off as progressive electronic music. And now that Bojsen-Møller has upped the ante with this wonderfully expressive and inventive album, there should be less tolerance for their primitive techno-blather.