Salsa with Mesquite, the self titled chiller opener opens with detuned water gong ambience* and tweeter testing icepick tinnitis tones. Trademark MP scratchy funk is folded in next, though softened and filtered to dull the sharp edge. This is a strange and disoriented piece, which rewinds several times back to its soft and eerie ambient roots. This cushioned foundation, when overlaid with kung fu fighting samples, clangoring slow breaks and the slightest whiff of u-ziq funky melody is a tasty yet surprising concoction, hence the title, a startling appetizer that leaves you ready for just about anything.

You leave the opener pretty tensed up, but when you hear the opening soft and bouncy chord strokings of Happi, you instantly de-brace yourself. It’s soothing, yet peppy and decidedly upbeat. It’s a lovely mixture of soft attack jazzy syncopation, a staccato oriental stir fry over melody, whip-sawed percussion, and a lagging single finger hunt and peck loopthat continues through out the core of the track. At the first break, all is peeled back, save the simple imbalanced loop until some metapharstically sinister synth pounding scares you back to the un-niceness of the real world. Happi is an uplifting armchair finger tapper, and happi techno definitely wins out over all things dark and ominous in the end.

Loam is a rhythmic, gyrating unit that bears little resemblance to the loose soil of its namesake. Cool rhythmic pulsing, ricochet firing range drum hits, and a paranoid synth loop topsoil give this one a decidedly Detroitish feel. Midstream, Jake Slazenger cameos his own brand of thumbwheel pitchbending electrofunk gymnastics, which give it a nice bump, until the track is terminated mercilessly.

Picture a bank of tines of graduated length carved of high tensile steel. An irregular cam of acetylene torched slag, has raised nibs which majestically pluck the metallic tines once this mechanism is energized by a coal fired sputtering steam engine. This bladerunner music box sets the opening stage and ongoing foundation for Reflectiv, one of the high points of this collection. Mike’s Claire de Lune gets increasingly funky and beat driven, until it’s a full fledged dancefloor stomper. A constantly reassuring u-ziq birdcall synth warble reminds you who’s at the wheel, and a Paradinas cum rock star solo which is muchos excessive makes you thankful that that the Casio’s electric guitar patch is so infrequently used. This one evolves in a big way, and fun’s a common element throughout.

Leonard is a bleepy little hummer with a decidedly rephlex mechanical feel. The rhythm is impelled by beeping, pinging and squonking on many levels. The refrain is a ultra-squirty dodger over softly ebbing waves of familiar sounding * ambient strings. Mike next subliminally chills spines with minor key hollow gourd climbing and a barely perceptible major key sub-bass figure which leaves you smiling all warm and fuzzy, although everything your hearing can perceive is basically dissonant and ominous. A sensation that’s fleetingly brief, but it’s a yummily brilliant u-ziq moment.

Balsa Lightning is the closer and we are (for whatever reason) graced with two mixes. Opens with emotion filled piano pounding, overlaid with u-ziq plucky synth curiosity and a gary wright dreamweaver trill. Shades of Auqueam as a probing and soaring melody makes you longful for all things yet unknown. Tightly and frenetically plucked rhythm guitar arpeggios lead the way to a lazy but oh so silky fluegelhorn solo line. Frantic polyrhythmic percussion winds the energy up to the close until this one collapses on top of itself abruptly. Jake’s mix is not drastically different from the original; the synth lines are tweaked and bent farther, and the drums are farther away down the echo chamber, but hit much more tuffly. The only offbeat additions are some rhubarbesque steel drumming and a probing synth line which namechecks Morricone.One of these mixes is superfluous, but don’t ask me to give one up.

Altogether, Salsa with Mesquite lives up to MP’s credentials, although fans who were hoping for ground breaking sonic vistas a la T-n-V may come up a little disappointed. Mike is obviously relying on the groove more than the majestic melodic journey these days, but his stuff is still creative enough to warrant admiration. It’s certainly tasty enough to tide us over until Spatula Freak and In Pine Effect.

1995. all rights reserved, all wrongs reversed.

Jeff Davis (pHlow)

jjdavis@xnet.com

http://www.xnet.com/~jjdavis/