Spring Heel Jack's seventh album, Disappeared, is an undeniable testament to John Coxon and Ashley Wells' considerable talent and originality. Drum-n-bass acts can rarely boast even seven 12" releases before they fall foul of their own copycat inadequacies or jump onto the Mixmag-sanctioned style of the month. Spring Heel Jack care not that the Manumission mongoloids won't dance a day-glo strut to their cerebral works, nor that the Hoxon Square Mafia have a whole new set of sneaker aesthetics by which to judge nu-jazz crews.

It's Coxon and Wales' self-assurance that has seen them through being just another dub-cavernous junglist act picked up by a major label, to being dropped by that major, to signing to an indie that welcomes their abstract proclivities and relishes their installation-enabled audio.

Unlike the Oddities album, Disappeared stays pretty much clear of Simfonias for Four Turntables and A Concrete Block or clanging homages to La Monte Young. The only starling avant-gardisms come in the form of guest bass clarinetist (and hugely gifted Devonian) John Surman.

For the two takes of the title track, Surman adjusts his instrument from the autumnal gold-drenched tones he showcases on his Coruscating release, to the percussive, embryonic capsules of distortion. It's quite an effect and it sounds like Coxon and Wales are unsure what to make of Surman's contribution. So, they cop out and plant Surman's seeds in a heavy ambient soil, hoping something will germinate. It's a shame because rather than wowing The Wire collective, the duo could have directed the avant-garde to a fresh, untilled tundra of possibilities. But, hey. I should have the luxury to complain when so many drum-n-bass acts fail to reach beyond the mediocre.

Spring Heel Jack have rarely relied on the well-worn breaks so brainlessly incorporated by many others. For instance, the battery that powers "Rachel Point" sounds like the Latin massive that propelled the Pet Shop Boys' "Se a La Vida;" the bass that grainily slides through "Mit Wut" seems to have slipped out from one of those hydroponic sessions Adrian Sherwood arranged for Primal Scream a few vanished years ago. Coxon and Wales even find time to have some light fun with big beat on "Trouble and Luck" before returning to dub for a clicks n' cuts rinse out Cole Porterishly titled "To Die a Little."

Released almost exactly five months after their previous proper album, Treader, how has the band developed? Not all that much. But then again, Spring Heel Jack have never been bombastic and headline-grabbing. Some expected this album to be an abandonment of junglism for the splenetic classicisms and noisebursts that blunderbussed through Treader. But if anything, Disappeared reestablishes Spring Heel Jack as drum-n-bass experts, gifted at layered percussion, and erudite at unsettling listeners with an uneasy ambience.

Over the years, they've let go of the laboratorial digitizing of the sounds around us for richer, more organic statements. They have not imagined the Earth populated by cyborgs or composed soundtracks for straight-to-video Matrix rip-offs. And even if Spring Heel Jack may have their records played during donor-evenings at the Tate Modern, at least they don't think they live there.

-Paul Cooper