In lending their master reels over to cohorts and colleagues to reconfigure, Jazzanova took a substantial creative risk. It’s one thing to commission remixes from predictable, similar artists, but Jazzanova, with their quirky, future-funk take on progressive electronic music don’t really have a lot of peers. Thus, even though the remixer roster here includes everyone from Stereolab to Madlib to Kyoto Jazz Massive to Forss (who adds some seriously dubstract ass to “Keep Falling,” making it this collection’s highlight), nothing strays too far from Jazzanova’s eclectic vision. After all, the group is comfortable with techno, hip-hop, downbeat, electro, post-rock and whatever other genres are employed on these two discs, so despite the wide variety of “guests” here, it’s ultimately a Jazzanova album. And a good one at that.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2003.