Cut the Midrange, Drop the Bass

Affectionately playing up the age of hardcore, the title track of Cylob's Cut the Midrange, Drop the Bass features a vocoder robot repeating a variety of rave/hardcore tag lines, including "ride on the rhythm," "pump up the volume," "jack to the sound of the underground," and "don't stop until the break of day" over some mid-tempo drill'n'bass. The B-sides "With This Ring" and "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" are similarly vocoderized pastiches, with some good drum programming but a little too much of the nudge-nudge buffoonery championed by defiantly unintelligent dance producers like Aphex Twin or Kid 606. ~ John Bush