Riddim Warfare

09/29/1998 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Mike Lipton

With a resume that includes tours with Ryuichi Sakamoto and electro-Indian experimenter Talvin Singh, scoring the movie Slam, and a collaboration with avant garde composer Philip Glass, NYC savant DJ Spooky is anything but a pedestrian mixologist.

Grafting, scabbing, and stitching a ragged quilt of, in his words, "music that's sculpted from endless fragments," Spooky (a.k.a. Paul D. Miller) is a wildly inventive egghead which, on his major label debut, works both for and against him. More accessible than his previous releases, Spooky hip-hops from ambient techno and breakbeats to spoken word and Miles Davis, jazz-inflected riffing with some not very audible help from Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Kool Keith, Organized Konfusion, and Killah Priest. Depending on your preference, you might be drawn to the aggressive, jazz-euro lounge of "Polyphony of One," the cool, spacey textures of "Post-Human Sophistry" or the down-home jungle mish-mash of "Scientifik."

However, Spooky rarely stays put long enough to get a bead on him. More cerebral than political, "Degree Zero" is named for Roland Barthes'sWriting Degree Zero" and segues from an oriental-flavored intro into Killah Priest's rap (whew!). The 21 tracks (72 minutes) don't make for an easy listen, but take your time--there's no chance of digesting this tome in one sitting.