Track Listing

1. You Are About to Witness
2. Dumb Mutha Fucka
3. Sum Ill Shit [Clinton Street Dub]
4. Synthetic Fury
5. Demon Seed
6. Synaptic Dissonance
7. Last Element

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1266321 in Music
• Released on: 1998-02-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Single, EP

Customer Reviews

AAAAAAAAGHH!!! I CAN'T STOP IT!!!!!!!!!
This ranks amongst the top ten $10 Purchases I Ever Made. DJ Spooky throws in a lot of ambient sounds over incredibly phat, phat, PHAT!!!! beats that have been blowing my mind on a consistent basis for, say, the last 168 hours or so, and I only bought the album 7 days ago.

Tracks 1, 5, and 7 are short ambient experiments. There's no real discernible melody like you'll get with the Orb, however, so it falls a tad bit short.

However, I don't even notice, given the incredible 100%/0% phat-ness to suck-ness ratio of the rest of the album. "Dumb Mut****a", while perhaps not the most eloquently titled song, just has an incredibly banging beat set to some orchestral sounds - imagine Gustav Holst gone hip-hop. "Sum Ill S**t" - um, well, it's exactly that - VERY ill, uh, stuff. A bit more off-rhythm, but I groove to it nonetheless. It's more laid-back and melodic than the other DJ Spooky tracks I've heard.

However, that only prepares you all the more to have your entire body flattened mercilessly against your car seat, cubicle wall, whatever (the nearest surface) by the relentlessly evil and LOOOOUUUUUD drum-n-bass track "Synthetic Fury". Mere words don't do this track justice so I'll just say that it's the coolest drum-n-bass track ever made, bottom-line. (Yes, that statement takes Prodigy, Goldie, Meat Beat Manifesto, Adam F, whatever into account...it's that freaking good.) Imagine a hand-grenade lobbed next to a gas-tank at an airplane refueling facility exploding in the middle of a birdcall contest while a semi truck drives off the edge of a cliff and lands on top of a flock of screeching seagulls, all simultaneously...if you can imagine enjoying that sound, this track will appeal to you for sure.

And finally, "Synaptic Dissonance" - well, I read in the novel "Dune" about 'synaptic reflexes', and how most people can't control them, and 'dissonance' in most music is simply an unpleasant sound, so I don't know why he chose this title. This song not only is incredibly pleasing sounding (more straight-up hip-hop with a drum-n-bass interlude in the middle), but I can dance flawlessly to it, as opposed to "Synthetic Fury", where I'm usually twitching uncontrollably on the ground. It grooves so smoothly that it'll turn you into a zombie like it did me...I just keep hitting 'rewind' over and over and over...

Play this one REAL loud, folks. Natural selection will cause anyone who isn't cool enough to like it to suffer a fatal coronary upon hearing it, and then the planet will be populated only by fine, decent folks who find the Prodigy or Goldie just too darn polite-sounding.

By far Spooky's best
This album is incredible. Songs vary from drum n' bass to trip hop to experimental - no rapping like some of his other albums. All songs have an futuristic, ethereal, movie-like quality. Great use of samples - my favorite is the 'Aliens' sample at the beginning of the 'Synthetic Fury' track.

Key word: LOUD
If you are one of those people who only owns a little CD alarm clock you might as well pass this one over and settle for Alanis. You can't just listen to this music, you have to feel it in your bones. To anybody who doesn't give a sh_t about their eardrums, buy this album and join the party.