Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly: Various Artists

"I have seen the future, and it is squiggly," David Byrne writes in the quasi-musicological liner notes to The Only Blip Hop Record You Will Ever Need, Vol. 1, a compilation meant to pin glitch techno on the world map charted by Byrne's Luaka Bop label. Clearing his throat throughout a funny send-up of academic writing, Byrne attributes glitch to a mysterious race of technologically advanced "Northern Europeans," who "have turned, through years of trial and error and the process of natural selection, a seeming handicap into a virtue and a unique way of life." He also faithfully traces the music's roots back through house, disco, and dub, but it's clear from the start that the headier reaches of techno theory mean only so much to a pop genius who once transformed "stop making sense" into an urgent battle cry. For better and worse, Byrne's goofed-up seriousness oozes all over Blip Hop. The album stakes claims to infectiousness by opening with Mouse On Mars' "Mykologics," a rubbery marching-band cut-up that blasts horn riffs and funhouse hooks over micro-edited click beats. The same gameful air blows through the static-draped bassline murmur of Mental Overdrive's "Gravity Sucks, Maan" and Marie + Scratch's "Gnit," an Autechre cover constructed from mouth moves by The Roots' human beatbox. Forgoing dance music for ambient trickle and scaled-down versions of hip-hop's boom-bap beat, the album takes a mellow stroll through solid tracks by Pole, Schneider TM, Doctor Rockit, Safety Scissors, Trineo, and To Rococo Rot + I-Sound. With a few exceptions, the artists float and wander above the delirious depths that can make glitch the aural equivalent of eye-chart poetry. But Blip Hop serves as a worthy enough primer for those not yet convinced that a life with only one glitch record is hardly worth living.