Zero One
Hearkening back to first generation electronic-groove music-- Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel-Jarre, Michael Hoenig--the anonymous creator ofZero Oneuses samples sparingly, relying instead on rich swaths of synthesizer wash, synthetic drum programming, and electronic bass figures. The long, repetitive structures of pieces like "Hell Is Cooling Off," "Trust," and "On the Threshold" support percolating vintage synth sounds and supple beats too light for house, too breathy for techno, and too jazzy for trance. Subtitled "Calculated Adventures in Electronica," the album includes liner notes about French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simon de Laplace, whose "differential operator" (the binary "01" code) is a key component of modern physics, and whose Nebular Hypothesis helped us understand the Solar System. While this may explain the project's name, it seems to have little bearing on the music, which nevertheless has its own empyrean delights.--James Rotondi