Pedal steel ace
B.J. Cole
's
Trouble in Paradise
picks up where
Stop the Panic
, his collaboration with
Luke Vibert
, ended; it is another step toward the futurist
exotica
he began seeking on 1995's
Heart of the Moment
. Here he teams with a slew of DJs --
Groove Armada
,
Trash Palace
Fluid
Kumo
Banknote Rajah
Vibert
Laura B
-- and other musicians; he gets further, deeper, harder, stranger on an aural road trip into the desperate side of the tourist travel paradise. It's like waking into a weird dream where everything is supposed to be fine, supposed to be groovy and relaxing, but is somehow freakish and even a bit frightening, but one can't figure out why. This isn't space-age bachelor pad music; it's more like tiki longue noir for the
Blade Runner
fan. It sits right in the speakers -- or better yet, oh so cool high-end headphones.
kicks some restrained sound effects and cheap drum machine loops and breakbeats into the mix as
Cole
's pedal steel becomes an elastic band of sound that doesn't whine so much as snicker.
"The Interloper"
hosts
, with his library of sampled loops of Indian percussion.
gets downright funky before the fully synthetic breaks pop in and a saxophone begins soloing somewhere in the background as spooky laughter and conversation float in and around the proceedings. It's creepy cool.
A3
offers a vocal for the distorted pedal steel deep-toned loops in
"Are You Ready for Some Country."
(This could the new
Sopranos
if
Tony
and company relocated to the South Pacific.) The track has no
country
music in it, but is more in line with a hard-bitten, hard-billed future
blues
. Longtime keyboard and sequencing partner
Guy Jackson
is here helping out almost everywhere, and drum boss
Neil Conti
does so on the silvery, mercurial late-night lonesome of
"Downtown Motel Blues,"
with a vocal by
Geoff McIntire
(aka
Dempsey
).
Conti
's rim shot kit work was processed into a killer loop and processed by
Brian Eno
.
's steel is strictly the atmospheric in this pre-dawn high lonesome as a harmonica whines through the edges, bringing to mind the
Western
scores of
Morricone
"East of Eden,"
with its live tables, sampled
Jackson
's keyboards, including a wonderful part for
's pedal steel processed to sound like a sitar, and
Ben Davies
' haunted cello is one of the most delightful things here. In all,
is a nice ride, a small sonic escape, a pleasant little nightmare that echoes -- in terms of feel -- the records of
Stan Ridgway
, though it's a steamier, more international kind of future
's idiosyncratic and records infrequently.
is a weird stop in aural no man's land. ~ Thom Jurek