artist: General Fuzz country of origin: USA style(s): Ambient rock, ambient breakbeat, lounge, Balearic essential releases: Messy's Place (2006, www.generalfuzz.net) Cool Aberrations (2007, www.generalfuzz.net)

If more producers composing ambient breakbeat (Sasha, for example) lived in sun-kissed San Francisco and jammed regularly with live musos, they might sound like this. But they don’t, which means James Kirsch aka General Fuzz has this sound all to himself. He loves the "live" element, building his elastic, funky grooves with a mixture of programming, composition and improvised jamming.

Messy's Place is his first mature work, a fantastic instrumental record of melodic breakbeat and loungey chill. It's intricate, loose and funky. The album's first half is mid-tempo grooves sitting around the 120bpm mark which bare some similarity to the complex ambient breaks of Sasha's brilliant album Airdrawndagger (2002). Except that Kirsch always places his melodies well forward in the mix - he's not making club tracks after all, despite their progressive house lineage - so even at low volume these pieces work well. His live organ, guitar and electric piano phrasings have a warm, jazzy looseness that echoes the Miles Davis classic In Silent Way (1969) and his building of harmonies through layering seems effortless. The album's second half detours into jazzy sax on "Liquid Jazz", smooching sunset atmospheres on "Lost" and "Bars Of Parma", and swelling violin with electric piano and bubbly drum pads on "Lido".

As with its predecessor, Cool Aberrations sounds surprisingly organic despite the drum machines. Many tracks start tentatively as if this was the first time he and his collaborators had played them, yet they morph into fully-fleshed-out pieces of music. The drum patterns this time around are usually fattened with the rapid patter of Indian tabla. Also thrown into the mix are various combinations of Indian tabla, guitars, trumpet, Hammond Organ, strings, various pianos and some sensual female ooh-ing and arr-ing. The album is sunny and tuneful throughout and, whatever the tempo, the soft-edged grooves remain swathed in the composer's trademark California glow.

HOME