Loudboxer, Speedy J's third album for Novamute, is essentially a mix CD with a twist: Speedy J (Jochem Paap) hasn't merely raided his record racks to compile this mix-- he's composed entirely new tracks with which to work listeners into a sweaty fervor. It's a clear response to Richie Hawtin's DE9: Close to the Edit, in which Hawtin took a microtome to his collection of minimal techno. Using an advanced piece of software, Hawtin spliced these fragments into a seventy-minute mix of precision aloofness. With Loudboxer, Speedy J seeks to trump Hawtin. Because the constituent tracks are his own, Loudboxer has a compositional unity and a personality that DE9 sorely lacked.
The track titles Speedy J has given to Loudboxer are there mainly to signify points of transition, or first instances of introduced sound elements. As is customary, the mix builds in intensity until the halfway point, at which Speedy J offers a brief respite in the form of a mumbled interlude. After that, it's another blast-off into unapologetically muscular techno.
Though the overall tenor of Loudboxer is the uncompromised violence of kick drums and searing hi-hat patterns, Speedy J contrasts the percussive thrust with tranquil elements, similar to those he spliced into the outstanding industrial funk of his two previous Novamute albums, Public Energy No. 1 and A Shocking Hobby. But these ambient elements predate J's bangin' style. His albums in Warp's early-90s "Artificial Intelligence" series, Ginger and G-Spot, belittled beats in deference to drifting, ambient nebulae; Loudboxer reverses this arrangement.
As well as outscoring Hawtin's DE9, Loudboxer also outplays the two volumes of Frankie Bone's Computer Controlled series. For those two releases, Bones came up with his own tracks, cut them onto twelve-inch acetates and mixed them live before a riled-up crowd of Californian ravers. Apart from a minute-long track recorded live, Loudboxer doesn't document the reflective energy of thousands of ecstatic punters. However, the album does offer the listener the high-quality mix CD that techno purists have long suspected Speedy J could deliver.
Yet, I must confess I'm disappointed with this release. I had hoped that Speedy J would continue his exploration of cyborg funk, begun with Public Energy No. 1 and furthered and peaked with the mutant beauty of A Shocking Hobby. I trust that Speedy J, satisfied that he's KO'd his labelmate Hawtin, will drop his battle stance and return to his pioneering experimental style.
