Billion Dollar Gravy

Drum 'n' bass has been in a perpetual state of death and rebirth for years now, but the most recent talk of resurrection has centered on a curiously soulful strain that purports to clip the genre's roots and replant them in less depleted soil. Lauded albums like High Contrast's Return Of Forever have moved to correct jungle's locked-groove mentality, but they also sound a bit cartoonish next to U.K. garage, the post-jungle style whose slower speed and fizzy airs make it better suited for actual tunes. Unlike those guilty of forced fusion, London Elektricity makes a convincing case for jungle's fixation with moods more common to house and soul. Billion Dollar Gravy points toward the audio-couture angle of coffee-table drum 'n' bass, but it also bends and breaks through beat spells that play rigid and raw. The title track opens with naturalistic drum sounds and spangly shine, then rushes into a moody bassline and fractious diva murmurs. Most of the album shares similar multi-part designs, which unfurl into real songs rather than the mere sum of pinched loops. Ubiquitous house fixture Robert Owens lends vocals to two tracks, easing his milky croon over a serious beat and a gorgeous piano figure in "Different Drum." The hard-soft interplay oozes all over Billion Dollar Gravy, whose highlights–"Fast Soul Music," "The Great Drum + Bass Swindle," "Cum Dancing"–breathe and sigh without snuffing out jungle's frantic heave. There's nothing so subtle about Soundmurderer. On Wired For Sound, the newfound match-and-mash master jams 61 jungle tracks into three mini-movements, each of which courses through an album's worth of tension and release. The selections all come from jungle's prime era around 1994, when basslines bled Jamaican and breakbeats hadn't yet been pressed into routine. Soundmurderer works with great tracks, but the cumulative effect of his weave makes moments hard to isolate: Certain songs run against their own remixes, then into tracks they provided samples for, and so on. The dizzying mix hits on all of jungle's payloads, from ragga-bounce bass to jump-up snare snap, but Soundmurderer's true allegiance lies with the "rinse," the clackety speed-run beat patterns so-named because they mimic automatic-weapon clips. Wired For Sound bends well past the brink of exhaustion, but that also seems like part of its point. When done right, drum 'n' bass commands too much immediate attention to leave room for dithering diagnosis.