Wreckage

Album Review

Rob Overseer is yet another in a series of DJs sitting in their basements in northern England (in this case, Leeds) with a lot of machines creating electronic dance music and ethereal soundscapes. If much of his debut album Wreckage sounds familiar to almost anyone who hears it, there are two reasons. One is that its collages of beats, sampled instruments, raps, and repeated chants are not unlike the work of Fatboy Slim and Moby, to name only the most well-known purveyors of the same style. And second, like those predecessors, Overseer has managed to place his tracks in a variety of media even before this album was released, making it something of a compilation of tracks already heard in commercials (particularly for liquor and automobiles), video games (Gran Turismo, Stuntman), television series (C.S.I.), and movies (Snatch, Any Given Sunday). (In some cases, the tracks have been used only in commercials for movies, not on the soundtracks themselves. For example, both "Supermoves" and "Insectocuter Dub" were only in the commercials for Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life.) Overseer has a particular affection for 1970s-era heavy metal, particularly its fuzztone guitar effects, so that, for example, the middle section of "Horndog" is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." But he also calms things down in such tracks as "Aquaplane" and the concluding song, "Heligoland." Although the album has a running time over 76 minutes and that final song runs almost 27 minutes, that length is deceptive. After about six and a half ambient minutes, the track is reduced to the sound of a ringing telephone that then rings for the next 20 minutes until someone says, "Hello," and the album comes to an end. We listen so you won't have to. (The album contains occasional expletives, but it does not have a parental advisory sticker.)