Prefuse 73's Scott Herren didn't patent glitch-hop; he simply popularized the "cutup" method of cramming as many damn musical thoughts as possible into each minute. Many other underground luminaries had already connected Dirty South crunk with the cubist contortions of Autechre and Mouse on Mars: Push Button Objects, Funkstorung, Otto Von Schirach, and Jimmy Edgar, to name a few. Deriding these artists for plagiarizing each other's ideas would be remiss. It would be like rejecting the entire generation of 60s Anglo blues geeks who mimicked (some say bastardized) the harmonics and attitudes of their Chess 45s.
That said, Bidnezz-- the fourth albun from Machine Drum's Travis Stewart-- could sound to some like a collection of One Word Extinguisher b-sides. However, Stewart's record has more breathing space than and a tunefulness that seems missing in Prefuse 73's beat obsession. Plus, Stewart already made his name in glitch-hop with the 2001 milestone, Now You Know, which was released months before many critics sold Herren as indie hip-hop's reason for living.
Bidnezz is a continuation of the haphazard rhythms and poetics that Stewart toyed with on his previous album, Urban Biology, but without that record's cavity-grinding sentimentality. Soulful moments like "Time Turned Over Itself" resemble cool-jazz/R&B; soundtracks for auto malls or mutual fund commercials whose satellite transmissions got frayed in the Earth's shattered ozone layer. It's an ace noise.
Opener "Entrau" is a throat-clearing introduction that loops a keyboard ring from the "dream sequence" of some kiddie TV show. Right before the ecstasy rubs salt in the ear, the amputated crunk of "Disa Bling" hobbles in. There, female "eh's" are ricocheted between a muttering background and a shouting foreground, while some distracting dub organ vamps are thrown in for good measure. "$$legs" brims with AM static-clogged, hip-hop thuds that sink a Holiday Inn lounge piano tune.
And then arrives "Babbling", a diarrheal DSP release of scrambled voices from the dead. Stewart, bless his mortal soul, disrupts the album's groove with such abrupt tracks of whooshing musique concrete repellant like "Worldcomin", "Wiggle", and the vile "Badgerman". The digitally incomprehensible recording of homeys bragging about their Dirty South beats in "Hipsteos" almost qualifies, but at least it's about something.
Meaningful discord also graces the album's highlights-- Stewart gets bored when things grow too pleasant. "Stevie Bam Jackson" trudges to a waterdrop metronome as soul radio samples and Victoria's Secret muzak flash by. Our man then shreds everything and denies responsibility. Bidnezz's most arresting moment, "Mltply", skitters a Rhodes-funk riff over a sublime, blue-sky flute duet with upright bass. "End of C" is a minute-long trance of strings time-stretched into a leaking flood basin that wrecks the song's recording tape. You frighten me, Stewart.
