Red Shift

Just when you thought all the really interesting drum'n'bass albums had already been made (if, indeed, you thought any had ever been made), along come the celebrated international jungle-list Nick Parkin and DJ Tom Gillieron to prove that there's still more to be done with juddering basslines, foreboding chord washes, and jittery, hyperkinetic breakbeats. Like most of their dark drum'n'bass colleagues, Parkin and Gillieron keep the keys minor and the general ambience dark and brooding, but on Red Shift every track is broken up episodically by tasteful rhythmic and textural variations, dubwise pauses, and unexpected breakdowns. "Missing Particle" blends a brutally funky breakbeat with unpitched background noise that sounds like traffic at the other end of a 100-mile-long tunnel; "Coriolis" sounds a bit like what Spring Heel Jack might do if they hadn't lost track of their audience long ago; "Coriolis" is a long and more abstract composition that, once it gets going, hints subtly at Latin rhythms. And then the program ends with the title track, on which Parkin and Gillieron demonstrate that they can turn out standard-issue darkcore with the best of them, complete with growling cybernetic monsters and feathery triple-speed beats. Highly recommended.