Damage

This might seem like an unlikely pairing: the composer Roger Eno (who, though he has always had one foot in the pop music world, is classically trained and composes primarily in that mode) and Drum Club cofounder, Lol Hammond, who is known mainly for his work in the sphere of electronic dance music. This is one of those projects that is either going to succeed wildly or fail utterly, and happily, it's a solid success. Eno brings a level of harmonic sophistication to the proceedings that is generally missing from the world of techno, not to mention a contemplative, almost pastoral sensibility that he shares with his more famous brother Brian (to whom we owe the word "ambient" as a musical term). Hammond, for his part, takes what could have been almost soporific keyboard parts and muscles them up with electronic rhythm that never sounds artifically imposed. Hence, the soothing and yet rhythmically interesting flow of "Something Orange," and the slow, swinging, trip-hop pianism of "Hip Hop Flipperty Flop," which sounds for all the world like Music for Airports remixed by Portishead. That's a compliment. You can't really call this music "challenging," but somehow it's still very rewarding.