Fabric 38

by Rick Anderson M.A.N.D.Y. is the Berlin-based duo of Patrick Bodmer and Philipp Jung, a pair that has been working the German avant-club scene for years. Their contribution to the Fabric label's eponymous series is a weird and vaguely eerie set of techno funk that maintains a certain consistency of mood while drawing on quite varied material. Vocals are rare, and when they arise they tend to be weirded-up beyond recognition (check, for example, DJ Yellow & Astrid Suryanto's "To the Top (Guy J Remix)"), and while the beats aren't really house-derived they're not really anything else either. At times there are hints of reggae in the mix (poxyMUSIC's "War Paint (Claude Vonstroke Remix)", Booka Shade's "City Tales (Dub)"), and sometimes the beat itself gets slippery and almost queasy, as on both Decimal's "Idiosynkratik" and Lucio Aquilina's "My Cube" (which features some lovely bell tones). And a few tracks are vague in ways that tend to forfeit your attention rather than reward it. But overall this album is like a fine piece of abstract sculpture, one that attracts you in ways you can't really explain and that you can't stop looking at. Recommended.