Black Beauty

The second full album by Metope after over a decade's worth of releases on his Areal label, Black Beauty also comes seven years after his first full-length, so there's a bit of novelty already regarding this 2012 effort. Ultimately, what the full CD provides is the kind of appealing electronic music that both he and his label have regularly offered over the years -- far from the explosive EDM that has taken over imaginations in America and elsewhere, but happily blending elegance and energy in its own strong fashion. Various collaborations throughout vary up the easy shimmer and kick that Black Beauty offers, filtering the tactile happiness caused from fusions of glitch, microhouse, and more throughout -- not to mention the straight-up love of house still, as immediately evident on songs like "The Hessian" (one of two numbers featuring K_Chico) and "Deep Sheep." "No Self-Control" has Sid Le Rock piling on the distorted vocal sleaze entertainingly while stabbing synth parts ricochet in the arrangement, while the focused spoken word delivery of Undo on "Night Rider" perfectly matches the nervous moodiness of the main arrangement, caught somewhere between techno at its most self-consciously arty and space rock hangovers from 1979. A song with a title like "Bar Walks into a Guy" seems to indicate wacky humor but otherwise maintains the steady pace, while the stripped-down arrangement on "So Cutoff," the other K_Chico turn, is another standout. ~ Ned Raggett