Bravery

Lots of composers (in lots of genres) use the human voice as a musical instrument rather than as a conveyor of lyrical content. But on his follow-up to the Love Is a Liability full-length, Drew Lustman (aka Falty DL) does so in an unusually wide variety of ways. On "Tronman," the vocals turn a skittery, unsettled beat that falls somewhere between jazz and jungle, into an excursion into a subtly but deeply creepy dub; on "Play Child," off-beats are wielded artfully against vocals that have been stretched and cut into shapeless abstractions. In fact, completely abstracted vocal samples are central to several of the EP's most impressive tracks, including the awkwardly funky "Made Me Feel So Right" (which simultaneously evokes African Head Charge and an enervated Squarepusher), and the brilliantly broken "Mother Beam," whose rhythm manages, against all reason, to be simultaneously drunkenly lurching and suavely fingerpopping. The program's only weak track is "Bravery," which employs a structural strategy similar to that of "Mother Beam," but never quite coheres; it ends up feeling more chaotic, and less like the result of real musical thought. Overall, though, Bravery shows Falty DL to be continuing in impressive directions.