Isotope 217 was once a jazz fusion band relying almost solely on the catalog of electric Miles Davis to get them through an album. They pulled it off pretty well on record, and even better in concert. But while last year's Utonian Automatic showed massive improvement over their 1997 debut, The Unstable Molecule, the last thing I expected them to pull off was a genre-bending blend of creative jazz and German-style minimalist electronica. Yet, here it is in all its glory: Who Stole the I Walkman?
The album's bizarre title merely hints at what lies inside. Burbling cut-ups of incidental noise boil over rumbling bass tones and insect sounds. Subtle preprogrammed keyboards and digital twicks tumble along sporadic percussion. Backwards instruments float softly upon grids of glassy space effects. And mingling with these warped squirm-atics are elements of the tried-and-true jazz-funk Isotope 217 have cranked out on past efforts.
Who Stole the I Walkman? is, simply put, the next level of jazz. Isotope 217 meld genuinely inventive ProTools ambience with fusion, and end up with a genre that has never been explored. Their unsettling mixture of casual found sound, chopped clicks, gentle tones, and augmented chords is strangely comfortable, and the combination achieves a remarkable seamlessness, considering that these two styles of music were invented more than 30 years apart from each other. It also didn't hurt that Casey Rice-- who has, since the early '90s, evolved from an assistant engineer on Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville and the Sea and Cake's self-titled debut, into a studio wizard whose angular manifestations as Super ESP have hoisted him amidst the electronic elite-- recorded the album.
"Harm-O-Lodge" kicks off the largely downtempo record with an almost random bassline which serves as a meandering foundation for the song's sampled Atari beeps, cropped cymbal crashes, and insane sax. "Moonlex" opens with quiet, pre-set crowd noise-- likely from any of the billions of shows they've played at Chicago's prestigious Empty Bottle venue-- and over four minutes, melts into a thick syrup of Rob Mazurek coronet, computer-generated drones and various reversed instruments.
The crowd theme continues throughout "Kidtronix," but this time, there are twice as many people in the audience. Over the scenester racket, Isotope lay a chaotic assemblage of manipulated bass, jingle bells, and purposefully clumsy drumming. But the album's standout is easily "Sint_d," which consists of warm, organ- impersonating keyboards spilling microwaved chords over a series of clicks and cuts straight off a Mille Plateaux label sampler.
Who Stole the I Walkman?'s cover art is an homage to Squirrel Bait's self-titled album, but it's hard to know why they chose it for this album-- the record itself certainly doesn't sound anything like Squirrel Bait. Utonian Automatic featured nondescript, blurred photos that seemed to suggest genitalia (maybe it's just me), while The Unstable Molecule more accurately depicted the splattered disarray of their music with an oil painting of jumbled shapes. But the simple silver mosaic is oddly fitting for Who Stole the I Walkman?, in that, if nothing else, it looks "computery." It hints that there've been some unexpected changes in the Isotope camp.
This record breaks barriers for Chicago's tireless post-rock addiction, breathing new life into the city's stagnating avant-garde and jazz scene. Solely on the merits of its electronic facets, Who Stole the I Walkman? would blow away such recent innovators as Autechre and Squarepusher in terms of sheer originality. But combined with the band's trademark fusion skronk, it is the birth of a new music, and the resuscitation of truly exploratory jazz.
