As 1989 teetered on the edge of a new decade, something called Nightmares on Wax released a single called "Dextrous" on a nothing record label Outta the north of England called Warp. The record's drums were crude like a fingerpainting and its amelodic vreeps and klungs were what guys who spent too much time in dark warehouses called hooks. But its bass sound-- queerly metallic and low as it could go-- could clear up that sinus problem you've been having. In the fall of 1990, NoW released "Aftermath", similarly queasy to "Dextrous", with the junkie's paranoia bonus of a shrill loop of female vocals that spiraled like an Outta control body on the dancefloor.
These early singles were part of the "bleep" sub-sub-genre of Northern English rave that established Warp as the label we know today, bringing us almost two decades worth of forward thinking electronic music by acts like Gravenhurst and Maxïmo Park. By 1991, when NoW released its debut album, A Word of Science, it had abandoned the anonymity of white label singles for a rainbow-hued cartoon cover with the names George Evelyn and Kevin Harper attached to it. The album included the earlier bleep singles, but the meat were the mid-tempo hip-hop tracks full of whimsical steel drums and Steve Miller Band samples.
The next album didn't appear until 1995; by then Harper had gone and possibly taken the wit (and definitely the bass) with him. 1999's Carboot Soul improbably found Evelyn signed to Pavement's label in that strange late-'90s moment when Matador went about becoming an electronic label by signing/licensing all sorts of wack shit. (Burger/Ink excepted.) By then Evelyn had settled on the golden mean of downtempo: slow hip-hop breaks and wobbly-boom basslines, plus some instrumental textures in place of so-20th-century musical concerns like harmony or melodic development, and voices there to punctuate drum loops rather than express feelings, tell stories, or give you something to hum in line at the DMV.
This is why the average person does not need more than one or two downtempo albums. Banana Republic/cocktail lounge jokes may seem like cheap grousing in 2006, but the records keep coming. Like every downtempo producer, Evelyn has his moments, and mostly they're felicitous combinations of texture that are just a little prettier or hypnotic than the competition. But he's rarely surprising, 'cause that would be gauche. In a Space Outta Sound opens with "Passion", almost seven minutes of beats-and-strings with firefly flickers of organ that could be the downtempo platonic ideal if that didn't make it sound better that it actually is.
The sepia-tinted (of course) cover photo features a bank of loosely lashed together mobile soundsystem speakers, and Evelyn draws much from reggae, especially its trilling guitars and low-end theories. (Not particularly surprising considering downtempo sits almost exactly between reggae's lope and hip-hop's boom-bap.) Sadly the two best (read: different) tracks come at the end, a shame because you'll have probably put on something closer to actual music by then. "Soul Purpose" is trip-hop if it had been born in sun-soaked Miami rather than drizzly Bristol; an 808 booms and pings in the bottom and some strings drift off the top, like a screwed version of the girly, wistful booty bass of Ghost Town DJ's "My Boo". "African Pirates" juggles a few bongo patterns for the only track with an interesting rhythm, but, in keeping with downtempo's beanbag/crash pad aesthetic, the interest is cerebral-- it sounds good to your ears but won't do much for the stuff below the neck.
But, and it's a big but: lots of electronic music that the casual consumer couldn't differentiate from downtempo gets dap from e-heads who profess to hate downtempo. Listening to Theo Parrish's First Floor directly following In a Sound, you realize there's often not much melodic development or rhythmic variation in Parrish's highly touted music either. But the difference, at least as far as I can figure, is something Parrish articulates in titles like "Dusty Cabinets" and "Ugly Edits". His music is fuzzier, funkier, crunkier, it retains the grit of the music that inspired it that, grit that downtempo traded for "perfect" engineering when it became a genre that got its own section in the store. Evelyn could do with letting his machinery grow out and stay unwashed, cuz In a Sound just reminds you of the best shampooing you ever got.
