Flight Muzik

Album review

The first widely released album from 24-year-old Chicago footwork veteran DJ Diamond -- he's been producing since the age of 13 -- is the fourth full-length installment in Planet Mu's seemingly almost single-handed campaign to bring the music of the Windy City's quick-stepping juke and footwork scenes to a wider audience following 2010 albums by DJ Nate and DJ Roc, and the first Bangs & Works compilation. While Flight Muzik essentially adheres to the hallmarks of genre's instantly recognizable formula -- hyperactive, minutely sliced samples repeated incessantly, almost numbingly, against manically jittery rhythms, to dizzying and disorienting entrancing effect. Diamond's productions stand somewhat apart from those of his peers as sonically richer and fuller, less aggressive (if still decidedly tough, at least in rhythmic terms) and generally more varied. He's at least as likely to employ thick, nauseous synths as thuggish hip-hop-style vocal clips (à la the brief "Down Bitch") -- plenty of these tracks feature both -- and regularly works in snippets of jazz and soul ("Snare Fanfare"; the majestic Willie Hutch-flipping closer "I Choose You"), bursts of discordant brass or orchestral bombast ("Burn Dat Boy"; the Santogold-sampling "Go Hard"), and plenty of stranger, less identifiable sounds. Even the percussion here (often more nuanced and abstract than in much footwork) leans heavily toward the treble end of the spectrum. The result, especially in the texturally lusher tracks toward the beginning of the album, is to heighten the hypnotic, perversely lulling effect of the repetition in a way that feels slightly warmer and woozier than the genre's typically ferocious non-stop bluster. Which isn't to suggest that Diamond is a big softie. Just take the menacingly sparse, gutterball fuzz-bass of "Torture Rack," with its unpredictable and unnerving array of percussive sounds, or the cinematically epic, constantly shape-shifting album highlight "Decoded," which combines snaky, insistent, Eastern-tinged video game synths, over-the-top metallic guitar, and probably the album's fiercest low-end beat drubbing. If Flight Muzik is perhaps less direct and immediate than DJ Roc's awesomely hard-hitting The Crack Capone -- and possibly, at least in spots, less overtly dancefloor-minded -- it's probably a good deal more appealing to actually listen to, and more broadly accessible, emphasizing footwork's commonalities with the likes of dubstep, glitch, techno, and grime. Fans of those genres, or anyone interested in truly radical, cutting-edge dance music, will find this well worth checking out.

© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo