DJ Food: The Search Engine

DJ Food, The Search EngineDJ Food: The Search Engine
For over two decades now, DJ Food has created music that broadly fits into the electronic music genre. His original works, the Jazz Brakes series, were a collection of breaks, loops and samples, that could be used for mixing, remixing and producing. He released five volumes of the project over four years, 1990-1994.
After that time, releases from DJ Food became more sparse and less focused. 1995’s A Recipe For Disaster was an eclectic mix of trip hop, chill, and EDM. 2000’s Kaleidoscope was more of the same. Now in 2011, he releases his third post-Jazz Brakes release, The Search Engine which proves to be his most eclectic and least focus effort to date.
The unfocused nature of the album can be attributed to its recording process. Essentially, the record is comprised of the better moments of three separate EPs which are distilled into one continuous 56 minute mix. But how those 56 minutes are spent is what is really puzzling.
The album is part beat tape, part psychedelic experimentalism, and most puzzling of all, part hard rock. “Prey” which finds Food collaborating with J.G. Thirlwell is reminiscent of White Zombie‘s “Black Sunshine” with its moody distorted bass and spoken word lyrics. “Giant” is a cover of the 1983 The The track featuring The The’s only steady member, Matt Johnson. “The Illectrick Hoax” features Natural Self on vocals. The track features live drums, hard rock guitar riffs, and thumping bass.
These very un-DJ Food-esque blips really break up the album’s flow and pathos giving the listener a disjointed experience. The disjointed experience is not helped by trippy interludes featuring spoken word clips and psychedelic instrumentation. The Search Engine ends up feeling garbled and unfocused.
Rating: 3.3/10
MP3: DJ Food featuring J.G. Thirlwell “Prey”
Buy: iTunes or Insound!

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