I Choose Noise
Few artists bring down the defenses of the electronic music skeptic quite like Hybrid (a.k.a. Mike Truman and Chris Healings). The South Wales duo's juxtaposition of elegant strings and athletic breakbeats is a potent cocktail, as anyone who has experienced the triumphant swells of "Finished Symphony" or the beckoning strangeness of "Higher than a Skyscraper" will attest. So it may be a bit of irony that Hybrid names its latest opus--which features collaborations with composer Harry Gregson-Williams, Perry Farrell, and others--I Choose Noise. Gregson-Williams's orchestration and the 36-piece Northwest Sinfonia give the album's compositions a deliciously harrowing, cinematographic quality; one could surely find no better soundtrack than "I Chose Noise" for that moment when the mad scientist realizes that not only is his creation alive, it seems to have plans of its own. Indeed, weaving itself into both the instrumental and vocal tracks alike is a primordial sense that something has gone terribly wrong, andI Choose Noiseat times comes off as a more polite version of Boards of Canada'sGeogaddi, one that trades in the latter's spiraling psychedelics for a more sinewy--though no less intricate--synthesis of elements. In the end, the listener can't shake the feeling that the music is straining toward some kind of mysterious, final confrontation. One thing, however, is clear: if this is Hybrid's idea of noise, it will no doubt leave fans and one-time skeptics clamoring for more.--Brent Kallmer