Bodega

Bodega is the perfect title for this album. Like a good downtown corner shop, it offers a warm and friendly ambience, and is well stocked with a variety of tasty international treats. There's the rich dubwise reggae flavor of the aptly titled "Yard Swing," the rhythmic found-sound kaleidoscope of "Take It to the Corner," the South-America-Meets-south-India ambiguity of "Back Fence Suite," the faintly creepy "Funky Cortado," with its surf guitar and wisps of crooning vocals, and, last but not least, the jazzy "Gate Closer Blues," on which tightly arranged horns alternate with skronky free jazz elements. Best of all, though, is "Rooster Rooster," on which the alternating elements are jittery trip-hop and smooth rocksteady. The whole program is presented as a continuous DJ mix, which means that the tempo doesn't vary as much as it should — or at all, really. But DJ Olive does an admirable job of keeping the various musical elements ebbing and flowing in such a fascinating way that the album ends before you realize it. Excellent.