A message for those who don't like Richard Devine: you're too stoopid to appreciate Intelligent Dance Music. Grab your freakin' Skint records and go home, morons! Leave the IDM for us sophisticates to appreciate.

Hey, I'm only joking. Actually, there's no correlation whatsoever between your appreciation of Lipswitch and your intelligence quotient. Case in point: Stephen Hawking hates IDM. The only Aphex Twin he can even tolerate is Selected Ambient Works II. Give Hawking a Donna Summer 12" and a decent single-malt and he's orbiting planet Goodtime. So there you go.

Anyway, "IDM" is probably the most despised genre tag out there, but only for people who take it literally. Consider Rhythm & Blues. Does Toni Braxton or R. Kelly know any more about the blues than Marie Osmond? Probably less, when you consider Osmond's difficult battle with postpartum depression. The point is, all these designations crop up for some lame reason and take on a life of their own, and only then do they become somewhat useful. At their best, genres are tools to help people talk about something they care about. The true test of any genre designation is whether or not you have an understanding of what someone means when they mention it, and I think IDM works quite well in this regard. I have an idea what to expect when I hear it.

And what do I expect? Well, I expect it to sound like Lipswitch, actually: frantic beats, every pseudo-organic sound that granular synthesis can render, and some dark ambient passages to stitch the pieces together. In other words, sonic chaos loosely held together by the CuBase grid. Richard Devine has earned a reputation as one who's has mastered the world of music software. And to his credit, it is amazing how many different fragments of sound he uses in each individual piece here. Every track is practically bulging at the seams with unique clicks, grinds, rubs, slaps, tickles, and whines.

But then, it was also impressive to hear how fluidly Yngwie Malmsteen could incorporate Bach's fugues into his solos on Trilogy. For about 35 seconds. Technical mastery is great, but you have to use it to make something worth listening to, and a good half these tracks fail to pop out of the Magic Eye painting that is the contemporary IDM scene.

The few cuts that do stand apart nearly make it worth the effort. What makes "Swap Trigger" for me is the ways it swings mightily on the strength of its industrial percussion. The deftness with which the leaden drumbeats are deployed almost seems absurd; the bass and snare hits appear too heavy to fly with such ease, and this creates some pleasant tension. And then there's "Kepter," which reminds me of Autechre's take on electro circa Tri Repetae++-- like Mantronix with a Ph.D. in information theory and a pounding bass groove to nod to. Though the track is no less cluttered than the bulk of Lipswitch, the authoritative rhythm anchor makes the sonic loopiness easier to digest.

The problem is, most of Lipswitch's songs just aren't that rhythmically focused, and dance busily across the screen without finding a shape or mood. Yes, it's "interesting," but it doesn't make me feel.

-Mark Richard-San