"I have had this album for at least a month now (I am currently without a job and was working retail previously, so days mean nothing) and keep telling myself and others that "I really need to write up this album for MRT! It is groovy and cool and trippy and The People Need To Know!" Well, I finally got around to it... 

I am pleased with the serendipity of this album. It came from nowhere from a man whose music has influenced me and it is an album that fits right into what I like on the first listen. It has been difficult to write a review because it doesn't seem like a new album but more like one that if it were on vinyl that I would have worn the groove right off the surface by now. 

This 11 track work clocks in at 46 minutes with all tracks being instrumental and most of which have a smooth transition (no pause) between them. The feel of it on the surface is similar to The Grassy Knoll. Some of these songs must have been conceived in a dark and rainy back alley in the strange hours when you don't know if you should still call it 'night' or 'morning'. There is less traditional jazz influence though. No horns wailing or more appropriately no horns that can be easy labeled as such that are making that wailing noise. 

The whole albums feels to me as if I am an interloper in a sci-fi story from the fifties where I missed the crucial first few pages. There are shadows, creeping sounds of reverb, distortion, and yet there is always a definable theme and hook to each song. There is a dark economy that makes each song feel slightly desperate or lonely. The musical landscape is bleak and lit by the long darkness of sunset. There are guitars and drums and less easy to define noises all swirling together. The band takes its name from a term for traditional magic and one certainly can feel an evil eye searching about in the soundscape flowing from its murky source. 

Squadra Fantasma is a wonderfully swampy concoction of layered sounds that grabs hold of you on the first listen and only gets deeper under your skin over time. 

My favorite tune off the album is "Tight Corner" which is slow and dreamy and uses a tires squealing sample which all reminds me of dreams I have had.
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Computer-influenced musical composition has come a long way from the by-gone salad days of the early 80’s, a time when LCD screens flickered and primal binary programs crudely looped small snippets of sound. To quote a cigarette ad from those days, you’ve come a long way, baby.

--The music of Jettatura, the duo of Dave Hill Jr (Guv’nor Beats) and James Rotondi (Air), rides in a headspace where acoustic and organic instruments mate to form completely new sounds. Squadra Fantasma is the audio equivalent of the ending of Kubrick’s film AI, where the organic has evolved and morphed with the digital world, creating a completely new form of (musical) life.

--Luckily, jettatura succeeds far beyond the attempts of the Spielberg directed film. Smears of horns overlap drips and drops in ‘farouche,’ presenting a Morricone landscape replete with arpeggiated guitar and piano. ‘battling maxo’ builds a distorted bass riff into a flurry of darting wah guitars and tripped sound effects. All that’s missing is Bjork coo-cooing over top. 

Other tracks — the agro stomp and grit of ‘ghetto foot,’ the Hendrix-meets-aphex-twinism of ‘turn a blind eye’ — explore a frontier beyond techno dribble or jazz, a more tweaked out Tortoise, a cohesive version of Intelligent Dance Music. Closer ‘tight corner’ brings together the best of what jettatura has to offer, a tweaked out and sampled-up soundscape for the movie of your mind.

Jettatura shakes up familiar elements and brings them back together in new and interesting ways, an audio boggle that pleases the ears as well as the soul. Squadra Fantasma is a refreshingly fluid piece of electronic work.

Pros: familiar ingredients but a whole new recipe--
Cons: some (acceptable) GMOs--->Useful for: campfire philosophizing, subway commuting
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Carefully engineered beats and haunting melodies are the key ingredients in the recipe for Jettatura. Prepared by two veterans who have been cooking up rhythms and basslines with such personalities as Mike Patton’s Mr.Bungle, Air, and Les Claypool, Jettatura transcends all boundaries of what is expected and what is familiar in today’s diluted electronic music scene. 

 

Their menu consists of creepy, ambient beats chalk full of eerie basslines and spacey drum patterns that drill, explore, and analyze the deepest and darkest corners of your mind.  Citing Dan the Automator, DJ Shadow, Air, Massive Attack, and DJ Spooky amongst their influences, it’s easy to see how Jettatura’s direction turned towards the intelligently and carefully structured mind-expanding style that it did.  They obviously took their time in crafting the perfect melodies and selecting the appropriate samples, which touch on everything from rock to hip-hop to jazz, to complement and complete the unique soundscape that is “Squadra Fantasma.”

 

If you’re looking for something new, something original, something that doesn’t play up to the hype of the Soundscans, but definetly caters to a public starving for quality, look no further.   Everything from trip-hop to industrial to rock, breakbeat, jazz, and blues.  Jettatura has arrived.
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