September 05, 2002 Music » Hear & Now

Muzikizum (Skint/Columbia)
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X-Press 2 

Muzikizum (Skint/Columbia)

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This debut album by the British trio X-Press 2 includes all but one of the group's club hits, and it's easy to hear why each cut thrived on the dance floor. Throughout the album, X-Press 2 weaves a tapestry of bubbling, pulsing and percolating arpeggios, and no one intuitively sees more potential in an arpeggio than a DJ. Any two to five percussive sounds make a chord of some sort, and that progression serves as a counterpoint to the next five sounds, and the dialogue between those two chords speaks to a third, an interaction that can dance over, under or across various sustained tones -- backgrounds, foundations, mists and fogs.

All dance music knits with similar tools. What makes X-Press 2 more interesting than the average dance-music crew is the tightness of its weave -- arpeggios within arpeggios within arpeggios, each multicolored and multitextured. "AC/DC" has a carnival-ride sense of melodrama, and "Smoke Machine" takes the sounds of such rides -- air escaping, water spraying, electronic pulsing -- and pours them into a symphony of not-quite-white noise. This is slick, engaging work, if a little cold. Steve Edwards' soulful vocals on "Call That Love" warm the place up for a moment, but Muzikizum is definitely more Kubrick than Spielberg, and that's not weak praise.

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