Track Listing

1. Pandemonium
2. Synchronic Disjecta
3. Object Unknown
4. It's Nice Not to Lose Your Mind
5. Dialectical Transformation I [A Parallax View]
6. Post-Human Sophistry
7. Quilombo Ex Optico
8. Rekonstruction
9. Scientifik
10. Conversation
11. Peace in Zaire
12. Dialectical Transformation II [Du Nouveau Monde]
13. Degree Zero
14. Roman Plantetaire
15. Bass Digitalis
16. Polyphony of One
17. Riddim Warfare
18. Nerd
19. Dialectical Transformation III [Soylent Green]
20. Theme of the Drunken Sailor
21. Twilight Fugue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #660585 in Music
• Released on: 1998-09-22
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.com
Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, is a musician, writer, and conceptual artist from New York City. Trailblazing a new definition of environmental music, Spooky reconstructs sonic data and produces sounds of a futuristic metropolis. A contextual agitator intent on artistic rebellion, Miller fuses urban rap and contemporary electronica. He imaginatively unites large chunks of hip-hop, unearthly jazz, and reggae beats with ambient soundscapes. Besides using drum programs and interludes of spoken word, Spooky is joined by several talented musicians. Featuring Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and trumpeter Ben Neill as well as rappers like Kool Keith and Killah Priest, Riddim Warfare is Miller's most ambitious undertaking to date. Displaying ability on bass guitar and a mastery of the studio, DJ Spooky makes music for the next millennium. --Mitch Myers

Spin
Despite its ungainly, bombastic title, Riddim Warfare is far from a call to arms. Spooky's music is fluid, intuitive, and unexpectedly expressive.

Entertainment Weekly
Spooky's headphone-designed sonic whirlpool flows from break beats to underwater-UFO effects...

Customer Reviews

Good thing it's digital
Otherwise I'd wear it out. Of the three Dj. Spooky Cd's
I have this is my favorite. It has the right amount of rapping
and enough smooth beats to make it pleasant to listen to. The other stuff i've heard of his is harsh and disjoint enough that you really have to be engaged with it to enjoy it. An earlier posting expressed their disdain for cool keith. I actually think he enhances the album. I've never like anything he has produced himself, but his voice works well with this sound. It's sometimes cheesy to hear peeps with philosophy backgrounds appropriate scientific terms to sound futuristic, but when Cool Keith does it on this album, it actually works.

The Illbient Masterpiece
I found this CD when going through the record store and I had heard some of his piece's on the radio it standed out I put it on and I was hooked. It's now a prize piece in my collection, his use of different bass guitars, live bands, DJ mixing, and samples makes for an album that has such a vast soundscape that it pulls you in. It is a absolute Masterpiece!

Will the real DJ Spooky stand up?
Though I'm always looking for interesting, innovative electronic music, I have resisted DJ Spooky for a while. Mainly because what I heard from him prior to Riddim Warfare sounded like someone tuning their ham radio while practicing their bass down the hall from any microphones. But (his pompous theorizing aside) I wanted to like him. And I figured Riddim Warfare might be my window into his work. It was on a major label. Hell, he was even working with rappers. Well, unfortunately, Spooky's still a work in progress. Despite a few interesting tracks, Riddim Warfare is all over the place. It's drum n' bass, it's Brazilian music, it's underground rap, it's reggae, it's pompous theorizing! All of this with no strong unifiying purpose. And unfortunately, he still drops into that annoying "illbient" vaporousness. I'm all for artistic diversity. But until Spooky develops some consistency to his work, he will just seem like he's genre browsing.