Various Artists: Electric Ladyland: Clickhop Version 1.0

Though his countless imitators have softened the novelty, it's still hard to overestimate the progressive promise of Timbaland, who has spent the past five years storming the hip-hop and R&B charts with some of the most mind-bendingly experimental pop music this side of Radiohead. In the past year alone, his production work—heard on Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On," Aaliyah's "We Need A Resolution," and Jay-Z's "Hola' Hovito," to name just a few tracks—has continued to redefine the notion of sonic possibility, incorporating tabla-tapped negative space, snaky violin lines, and shards of noise into stutter-stop beats that get funkier as their debt to minimalism becomes more pronounced. The artists on Electric Ladyland: Clickhop Version 1.0 are more likely to be at home studying liner notes than hollering along to the newest R&B banger, but their devotion to Timbaland couldn't be more apparent. The latest double-disc offering from Mille Plateaux, the label responsible for two genre-defining Clicks + Cuts compilations, Electric Ladyland marks an interesting meeting between minimal techno and the more explicitly rewarding swing of breakbeat-oriented rap and soul. The best tracks announce their pop ambitions loud and clear: Finnish phenom Vladislav Delay (as AGF/DLAY) and MRI turn in vocal numbers whose soaring songfulness makes their clipped micro-edits recede even further from view than usual, until they sound like an R&B take on Björk's Vespertine. On "Mr. Blister Is Connected To My Fingers," Safety Scissors dips a Timbaland-like march into deep vats of dub grease, smearing his pointillist clicks into ghostly suggestions of funk. The album's more overt hip-hop moments run from inventive science-fiction relics (High Priest From The Anti-Pop Consortium's "Soma 1128") to forced fusions like Graphit.E's "Five-11-West," which sticks to formula with "where my niggas at" sentiment. It's a shame that it takes a concept album to bring seemingly disparate worlds together, but at its gerrymandering best, Electric Ladyland illustrates how borders mean the most when they're ignored altogether.