Y'know, 1998 has been a strange year for electronic music; a year in which people have acknowledged the existence of drum-n-bass, but paid very little attention to the genre's releases. And this Grooverider record's an excellent example.

About one month prior to the album's release, hipster mag Spin wrote up a pretty massive feature on this friend- of- Goldie's. They proclaimed that Grooverider's then- forthcoming album, Mysteries of Funk, was gonna be amazing. Then it sunk without a trace. What's the deal with that? I mean, how often does a high- profile, billion- subscriber, mainstream alterna-mag call lots of attention to a respectible up- and- comer, only to have the artist's album perform a commercial bellyflop right in front of their faces?

Well, let's say this about Mysteries of Funk: It doesn't suck, but the reasons as to why the public didn't buy into it are obvious enough. For one thing, the tracks are too long for the general public's miniscule attention spans to process. I mean, when the leading track on your record is nine minutes of standard boom- thwack- thwack, boom- thwack, it's not exactly gonna jump out and grab Johnny Everclear. The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up," on the other hand-- you couldn't not pay attention to it.

Of course, drum-n-bass connoiseurs (and especially drum-n-bass DJs) will find plenty of room for this record in their collections. Grooverider's incorporation of jazzy horn samples and sci-fi, b-movie sound clips may not be innovative or original, but his beats are incredibly solid. And Mysteries of Funk is just further proof that he's a pioneer of the intellegent jungle sound. It also couldn't have hurt that up- and- coming jungle whiz Optical (who has a few brilliant records of his own on the market) co-produced.

Grooverider scores a few more points for enlisting help from sensational divas like Roya Arab ("Rainbow of Colour"), Sophie Barker ("Time and Space," the "Imagination" trilogy), and Cleveland Watkiss ("C Funk"); these girls add a very human element to the album's machinistic overtones, and manage to breathe new life into some of the record's less shiny tracks.

If you're digging on Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers, don't expect to find that same brand of overwhelming popular, feelgood big beat here. Instead, open your mind to something less commercially viable, slip on the headphones, and fall into a sound that's as dark as Gotham City and as cold as an Arctic winter.

-Ryan Schreiber

"Time and Space"

[Real Audio Stream]