Fabriclive.25

by Rick AndersonDrum'n'bass that sounds happy and fun rather than dark and menacing is worth its weight in gold. Lincoln Barrett, a young British DJ who came to the junglist trade by teaching himself to use a demo version of the Cubase software, has already shown himself to be a master of cheerfully eclectic drum'n'bass; his relative inexperience and self-confessed ignorance of the genre's traditional boundaries have led him to transgress them in revelatory and exciting ways. His contribution to the Fabriclive series finds him bringing together a varied but consistently brilliant assortment of mostly British junglists who either share Barrett's sunny musical disposition or were amenable to having it imposed on their work, and the result is thrilling: from the soaring vocal snippet that gives "Restart" (by DJ Marky, Bungle, and DJ Roots) its emotional lift, to Martyn's sharper and more spare "Nxt 2 U," to Klute's gorgeously piano-driven (and utterly mistitled) "Hell Hath No Fury," everything on this continuously mixed album delights and uplifts while providing a kaleidoscopically shifting array of variations on the basic High Contrast sound. The packaging is innovative and classy, if a bit inconvenient in actual practice. Very highly recommended.