Restaurant Of Assassins

There’s a very fine line between genius and lunacy, but Scottish producer in New York Neil Landstrumm knows where the border lies, and his latest album pokes fun at the crazies from a safe distance. From the album opener, the Chicago house bass meets cut-up hip hop attitude and hardcore sirens of ‘Kids Wake Up’, it’s clear that he is intent on having a laugh with electronic music’s ‘rules’. It’s no surprise then that he combines ‘90s bleep bass low end with gurgling 303s and daft ragga vocals over lurching, plunging rhythms that owe big debts to ‘original’ electro and dubstep. Landstrumm calls this sound ‘ravestep’, but whatever about its name, it sounds like the madcap has had the last laugh.