Drum-n-bass is in a poorly state right now. Frequent readers of Pitchfork have read many reviews lately lamenting the stasis into which this once-hyperactive genre has fallen. Will it rise Lazarus-style from this slump? Who will be the necromancer? Could it be Krust?

Krust is one of the few candidates for this bit of sorcery. Recording for Full Cycle and V Recordings, and renowned for darkly remixing Goldie, Krust certainly has the skills required. His keen aptitude for rhythmic texture and unadorned forthrightness have propelled him way beyond Roni Size or Goldie. New Forms and Saturnzreturn caused the demise of drum-n-bass. Those records annihilated the genre's concrete tower block-- urban soul in a risible display of supposed high art. How indicative is it that both albums were followed by remixed editions-- Goldie's Ring of Saturn allowed him to delete his Oedipal anxieties, While Replica gave Origin Unknown and Photek the opportunity to un-coffeehouse New Forms.

I may be proved wrong, but Coded Language won't likely be followed up by a remix disc. Krust has thankfully gotten it almost-right on the first attempt. Krust, unlike Goldie and Size, is not interested in divas belting lungs out over rinky-dink jump-up breakbeats. The coded languages he explores here are rhythm and its effects on freak-hungry ears. The record thus abandons any pretense of being nu-jazz or Hancock-like funk. It approaches illbient in the unease that it generates, but it's definitely a crucial unease rather than the full-on nausea produced by certain noodling junglist apostates. Krust's addition of a live drummer also adds an improvisational edge to his already harsh beats.

Krust's breakbeat fury is tempered somewhat, though, by vocalist Morgan. Morgan's melodramatic style is very similar to Breakbeat Era's Leonie Laws. Both chop at their lyrics, carving them into your foreheads. This is all very well, but like Laws, Morgan doesn't have anything terribly innovative or meaningful to say. She compares life to dodging stray bullets, for example.

Slam poet Saul Williams, however, more than compensates for Morgan's on-and-off success. His lone appearance on the title track makes Coded Language worthy of anyone's attention. Williams delivers a breakbeat manifesto that rivals the great hip-hop polemicists in its potency. He authoritatively states that breakbeat will be the foundation for the next stage of human evolution and the "ones-and-twos" will be the weapons of revolution. It's a silly proposition, of course, but Williams' honesty and forceful, biting delivery will leave no one unconvinced for the nine-minute duration of the track.

The collaboration between Krust and Williams offers a possible future for drum-n-bass. At the moment, junglists are locked into the same drum patterns and identical rhythms, rather than exploring the dub territory that drums and basslines could easily trek across. The drill-n-bass crowd (Kid 606, Data'chi, et al) can only prove their abilities to spin, bounce, and turn Amen breaks on pinheads. If this genre is to survive, its practitioners have got to learn to open their minds and rearrange. Investing in a new sample library wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

-Paul Cooper