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Jet Chamber III - PK 08/125 Release Date: 6 January 1997 Limitation: 1000 Rub Out 10.47 Dub In 21.19 Ultra Koran 3.10 Quite My Chords 24.19 Beel 2.44 all tracks written by Pete Namlook & Atom Heart
Along with Plug's "Drum and Bass For Papa", this album does more than any other I've encountered to blow the stink off the rotting corpse of drum'n'bass, a genre which has become a religion to its adherents and scared everyone else off. Anyone who loved the Nonplace Urban Field remix album "Golden Star" will love Jet Chamber 3, a record designed for listening, and one which eschews all the trademarked underachieving of the drum'n'base mainliners. Atom Heart (German electronics boffin who toured Australia with NUF's Burnt Friedman, but didn't quite make it down here) teams up with Faxlabel owner and Ambient guru Pete Namlook for collaboration which escapes the somnambulant nature of much of the Fax catalogue. Two of the five tracks are over 20 minutes long, but they miraculously never outstay their welcome. Tricky beats lay the ground work, over which the two boffins use their experience to sculpt subtly hook-laden progressions. "Dub In," for instance, uses a particularly ugly (but compelling) guitar riff reminiscent of avante-pop masters This Heat. The twist? The ugly riff is taken far back into the mix, creating an almost excruciating tease: the riff is a killer precisely because it's NOT in your face. The piece is an absolute masterpiece of genre-transgression and shows the Chemical Brothers and their ilk for the club-footed fools they are; in its prolonged but beautiful course we are treated to some perfectly simple electric piano tinkling, and even some jazz guitar, but integrated ornamentation, far from the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach favoured by today's pop kids. Sustained brilliance. 10/10
(review by Gary Steel)
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