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Mathhead, "The Most Lethal Dance"
This is the sound of post-rave culture chopped up and spitviolently back at the heads of those who remember what it was like totweet on whistles incessantly in a warehouse at five in the morning,but it's also a trip through Mathhead's unique headspace by way of hissampler. Mathhead'sdebut for Reduced Phat represents the most fun I've had with abreakbeat record in some time.
Reduced Phat
This New York-based producer'stake on blistering breakcore rave anthems is a perfect example of thepower of the sampler. The first twenty seconds of the first track on this record containmore samples than most entire albums, making it nearly impossible totell where Mathhead is going from the outset. This is the kind of record I want to hoist up wheneverthe copyright mooks rear their heads and claim that the digital worldis killing the profitability and creativity of music. On thecontrary, digitial technology and free access to an almost limitlesssupplies of shitty techno records is what makes records like this onepossible, and we need more of them.
Mathheadpays as much homage to the last twenty years of contemporary dancemusic as he makes a parody of it, and that's what makes TheMost Lethal Dance fun without leaving it sounding like aone-note joke. Laying goofy house piano riffs under ballisticbreakbeats is nothing new, but there's a certain joy in the wayMathhead cuts an amen, a rumbling bassline, and a soul singertogether. There are dozens of people doing this sort of thingright now, but this is probably the tightest and purest hybrid of shortattention span rave and jungle mashups that I've heard from the lot.
Thevinyl version of The Most Lethal Dance featuresthree Mathhead originals along with an excellent mix of "Bonafidekilla"from Aaron Spectre and a megamix courtesy of Drop the Lime. Theforthcoming CD version has all of that and a couple of extra tracks,including a strangely ambient remix by Mad EP. WhereReduced Phat has previously visited the visceral and hard-edged take onthis sort of thing courtesy of Edgey and Enduser, Mathhead's recordsounds more like the happy, bouncy flipside of the breakcore scene, andit's a welcome change of pace.
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