*** Nobukazu Takemura

SCOPE

(Thrill Jockey)

Remixer of Tortoise, Steve Reich, Roni Size, and Coldcut, Nobukazu Takemura is loosely branded an acid-jazzer. That's apt for his Kool Jazz Productions, DJ Takemura, and Spiritual Vibes incarnations, but not for Scope's minimalist aesthetic, which is miles away from acid jazz's sashaying rhythms and ornamented arrangements.

Scope recalls the pastiches of digital distortion, CD fast-forwarding rushes, ring modulated dial tones, found sound bits, and short-wave radio interference on labelmate Oval's synthetic tour-de-force Systemisch:. Owing far more to Pierre Henry, Iannis Xenakis, and Morton Subotnick than to any jazz-hop collective, this is a process recording, interesting as much for what one suspects is behind it as for the resulting music, which is nevertheless pleasing. The cover art -- austere line drawings toying with perspective, plane, repetition, and movement -- recalls Douglas Hofstadter's "whirly art" from his classic Metamagical Themas, which Hofstadter thought of as "metaphorical music."

Scope's opening track, the 22-minute "On a Balloon," is metaphorical geometry; it's about not melody or rhythm but distance, duration, speed, and the intersection of lines and planes in direct opposition. The Steve Reich-like "Kepler," with its harp, xylophone, and vocal samples, is like remixed gamelan music. And everywhere there's the digital blip, the ungainly sound of a CD "scratch," which in Takemura's hands becomes somehow beautiful -- electronic music's equivalent of letting the paint drip savagely off the canvas.

-- James Rotondi