And the Beat Goes Off!

• Artist: Various Artists
• Release Date: 2002 06
• Type: Collection (various artists)
• Genre: Rock

Review

In a short time, the Oakland, CA-based label Tigerbeat6 has taken the turntablism/experimental electronica/quirky electro-pop continuum by storm, and by mid-2002 the time had come to take a couple of steps back and capture a wide-angle view of what it had accomplished and where it was now heading. And the Beat Goes Off!, a promotional sampler available for very little money and distributed to subscribers of the U.K. magazine The Wire with issue 220 (June 2002), focuses more on the present and near future than the past. Most of the 24 tracks are taken from releases of the 2001-2002 season. It would have been easy to limit the track list to bouncy dancefloor tracks and powerful cuts by the label's best-sellers -- easy but not accurate. Of course, Kid 606, Blectum From Blechdom, and Cex get their turn to shine (and more than once), but the CD also leaves room for Pimmon's ambient moods, Main's distilled minimalism, Stars as Eyes' dreamy post-rock inclinations, and Nathan Michel and DJ Rupture's awkward cut-and-pastes. The sequencing is judicious, keeping the beat-heavy cuts for the first and last quarters and the more off-kilter material in the middle, but again leveled by crowd-pleasers. A couple of tracks could have been dropped in order to allow edited ones to be included in full (Michel's "Hello [Constant Sorrow]," for instance), but otherwise there is not much to complain about -- especially considering the retail price! ~ François Couture, Rovi

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