Like many other Americans who occasionally buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I find myself thinking about jazz from time to time. One of the things that jazz critics love to debate is whether or not a certain band or player "swings." I've never pretended to know what scribes from Leonard Feather to Stanley Crouch were talking about with that term, but lately I've been thinking how a similar distinction could be made between "swinging" and "non-swinging" laptop musicians.

To give you an example, the other day I downloaded Kid 606's remix of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton." Knowing what the Kid was all about, I'd hoped he would morph one of my favorite hip-hop cuts ever into something even more powerful and messed up. To my disappointment, the Kid seemed much more interested in shooting out the tires of this steady rolling classic. He did some great things with the voices, but what he did with the beats-- slowing them down, chopping them beyond recognition, and, at times, stripping them away altogether-- is unforgivable. Kid 606 took one of hip-hop's most propulsive moments and turned it into an academic exercise. He killed the swing.

To give another example, one of the things I love about Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album is the way the beats, which on certain cuts seem so scattered, random, and divorced from the pretty synthesizer melodies, always manage somehow to retain a sharp forward thrust. It thus seems to me a "swinging" IDM record, something of a rarity.

The Richard D. James album was certainly a huge influence on newcomer Yee-King, and fortunately, he manages to retain his inspiration (and label boss') sense of rhythm. So while SuperUser features loads of chopped-up, processed beats that often seem to have little to do with the underlying music, it usually manages to groove and move.

Upon first listen, the Aphex influence is almost too much to bear. "Goodnight Toby" opens with a pretty synth pad melody a couple of steps removed from an electric piano before the song is deluged with chaotic, undisciplined jungle beats that sound eerily familiar to admirers of the Aphex catalog. But damnit, all available evidence suggests that Richard James has stopped making music, so if somebody wants to put their own stamp on his sound, I'm all ears.

Especially if the imitator in question has Yee-King's melodic gifts and programming virtuosity. "Arp" nicely illustrates the latter. A quivering synth melody floats in, only to be overwhelmed by drums with extreme digital rolls and cut-and-pasted breaks remaining firmly on the beat. "Segmentation Fault" gets good mileage out of a squirming 303, a distant drone, and an unpredictable drum machine. And "Werkit," the most flat-out lovely track on SuperUser, blends a melancholy sample of backwards guitars (it's hackneyed, I know, but I'm a sucker for those) with an electro-style drum break, in which the percussion is processed to sound something like a human beatbox.

"Werkit" actually reminds me a lot of µ-Ziq, better known as Mike Paradinas. He made an album with Richard James under the name Mike & Rich, so that's yet another in-house influence for Yee-King. But even more importantly, Paradinas is another electronic musician who swings (check out Lunatic Harness), so again, Yee-King is forgiven. SuperUser may not be a wholly original offering, but I find myself moving in place every time I listen to it.

-Mark Richard-San