Propellerheads-Decksanddrumsandrockandroll (DreamWorks)
Silhouetted and decked out in dark suits, two men strut slowly from a fiery blast at a construction site. Slick and hyper-cool, it's like something out of movie-not Schwarzenegger, though, not Seagal. It's more like... Bond. James Bond.
Judge this CD by its cover: The Propellerheads, another pair of British DJs with identity issues, are obsessed with spy movies. And they flaunt their fetish all over their tour-de-force full-length debut, Decksanddrumsandrockandroll.
Try their musical thesis on for size: The Cold War gave birth to techno. In its current rocked-up incarnation, techno stirs the memory pot of those superpower-inspired spy flicks of the 1970s with their war-for-the-future syntho-soundtracks, those globetrotting breakbeats and a pressing need to crack the secret code.
Surprising as a sunrise, then, that the Propellerheads broke into the U.K. mainstream with a jacked-up acid house version of the classic theme to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Riding a Bond-sized bpm beneath the score's rousing orchestral maneuvers, the cover version hit the top five in England and sold like a six-pack of Sean Connery.
Along with "History Repeating," a collaboration with Shirley Bassey (who sang that other Bond classic, "Goldfinger"), "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is the centerpiece of Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, a clever album with some surprising turns, that spy-movie signature style and no breakbeat-of-the-week simple-mindedness.
The espionage aesthetic peaks with the Bond theme but it's on full-salute throughout: from the rousing, pure bass opener "Take California" to skin-session wit of "Velvet Pants"-"He's got a nice body," a sultry female voice opines, "he's wearing velvet pants"-to the supersonic car-chaser "Bang On!"
Bringing together the young and somewhat old, the Propellerheads are musical unification of mastermind Alex Gifford, 33, and hip-hop whiz kid Will White, 24. The mild generation gap works wonders, lending the spy movie obsession a few dabs of integrity and know-how.
But the real surprises come when the duo reaches back for street sounds and brings in guests like De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers to lay down some vocals. In fact, the 007 flair for gadgetry and world-saving theatrics overshadow the Propellerheads' effective allegiance to "old school like Ed Koch" roots. Decksanddrumsandrockandroll's coolest moment is the lazy, porch-talking "360 Degrees (Oh Yeah?)," a slow-builder featuring De La Soul at its best.
Flip over Decksanddrumsandrockandroll and there they are again-those two men in their slick black suits, shown from behind, anonymously leaving the scene of the crime. Don't confuse them with the Chemical Brothers or the Prodigy, fun bands with a profit-motive and no point. These guys are dressed to kill.
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