Kalmopyrin

It would be too harsh to say that Gabor Csupo's shtick is wearing thin. It's not really that. It's just that his sound is so recognizable now that it's hard not to listen to this album and think "Here we go again...here's a little jungle...here's another warped spoken word sample...here's another chilly foursquare beat...here's another hip-hop break." But the fact is that no one else, except maybe his labelmate the Flying Dutchman, is making music that sounds anything at all like Csupo's, and while it would be nice to hear a bit more development in his own sound, it's still a pretty unique feature in the landscape of modern electronica. On Halmopyrin, he's incorporating more explicit hip-hop and reggae influences (note the DJ samples on "Mary Goes Around" and the speed rap interlude on the attractively bizarre "Lemoncholly"), and he's also letting a bit more uncomplicated beauty come through, as he does on "Shaharezade" (sic). And of course, no one messes with vocal samples like Csupo: On "Anybody Seen My Pajamas?" he folds, spindles, and mutilates them into cyborg fantasy shapes, and on "Good Night, Suckers!" he layers them elegantly on top of each other. "Three Fish and the Seven Dwarves" is, at 14 minutes, a bit too much of a fair to middling thing, but overall this album is a worthy addition to Csupo's impressive if predictable catalog.