I'd been hearing about this hot new producer, Flying Lotus-- instrumental hip-hop guy, crafter of "Adult Swim" bumper music, John Coltrane's godson's internist's third cousin or something-- and it's true; he's good. Knows his way around a sequencer, cobbles crazy sounds into beats that only crazy people could possibly rap over (so, basically just MF Doom), has a moniker that looks ill stenciled on a crate. But damn, is someone running a wildly popular Modern Instrumental Hip-Hop workshop now? Does it have a monopsonistic chokehold on a host of beleaguered factories that produce big, brightly colored slabs of BEAT® at an ever more frantic clip to stay afloat against low fees and high demand? Is Dabrye not only the company's president, but a client?

I like squelchy bass, ray-gun trills, clever drum programming, and wobbly keyboards as much as the next guy who used to be really into Anticon, and I respect the polished craft that keeps 1983 shucking along. But like an overly workshopped novel, the album is stylish, well-turned, and interchangeable with its peers. Seldom bad, seldom memorable, Flying Lotus's IDM-influenced hip-hop is paint-by-numbers. That's not necessarily negative, but I prefer music that's willing to strategically violate the terms of its genre in order to make an impression. This stuff bangs, but with a cerebral bent-- splitting that difference dilutes its impact, and a more discernible human charisma would go a long way toward distinguishing it.

At least the paint is often garish and skillfully applied enough to distract from the faint template beneath it, and the eclectic style keeps outright tedium at bay. The title track's rubbery space-funk gets whipped into an electro-pop froth on a remix by Daedelus, marking the first time that Daedelus's presence has ever made anything less boring. The moist, glassy stabs of "Bad Actors" are nicely offset by the clicky, pitch-bending corkscrews of "Orbit Brazil" and the idyllic sheen of "Untitled #7". The stuttering creeper "Pet Monster Shotglass" jerkily mutates for upwards of six-minutes, demonstrating by example what much of the album wants for-- a sense of compositional completion and deliberate evolution that's missing from more static ideas like "Hello", which humps an ice-blue synth swirl into attractive anonymity.

Those of you looking for a good genre exercise will find plenty to admire on 1983. The boom always baps right on time (which is to say, slightly off-time). The herky is extra jerky, but not to the extent of disrupting a good head-nod. Each obstinate loop eventually starts to hiccup and convulse, which is how you know it's art. The rest of you will turn off this album wondering why you can't remember any details from it, and why you suddenly feel the urge to shop for a minivan.

by Brian Howe