R.U.O.K.?

Album Review

Not just an excellent producer and long-lived electronic careerist, Jack Dangers has also been on the cusp of nearly every trend in electronic music for well over a decade, ranging all the way from industrial dance to ambient techno, drum'n'bass to funky breaks. From the first few minutes of RUOK?, it's clear he's begun another shift, from the dense sampladelic dance of Actual Sounds + Voices to a sparse, haunted style that leaves much to the imagination but still displays acres of production prowess. Twelve tracks of primitivist electronics and drum machines over unobtrusive breakbeats, the album was recorded in part with a rare mid-'70s synthesizer, the EMS Synthi 100, but Dangers certainly hasn't donned the labcoat to make a dry avant-electronics record. With frequent funk samples and snippets of obscure '50s trad vocals all over it, RUOK? still has much in common with his series of populist breaks records, Tino's Breaks. It also includes appearances from two of the rangiest co-contributors to appear on a dance record in some time: psychedelic techno mastermind Dr. Alex Paterson (from the Orb) and turntablist mentalist Z-Trip; the featured tracks are among the best on offer, though the guests' contributions certainly don't stick out. Though Meat Beat Manifesto fans — and Dangers has picked up quite a few over the years — may have trouble following the direction, hardcore fanatics may have anticipated this from his solo release Variaciones Espectrales.