DJ SPOOKY VS. DAVE LOMBARDO

Personnel: DJ Spooky (synthesizer, turntables); Dave Lombardo (drums); Dalek, Meredith Monk (vocals); Chuck D (rap vocals); Vernon Reid, Gerry Nestler (guitar); Jack Dangers (bass guitar).

Recording information: 2005.

At first glance, the teaming of DJ Spooky with Dave Lombardo (drummer for Slayer and Fantomas) may seem an unlikely pairing. But from the opening remake of the Public Enemy tune "Brother's Gonna Work It Out"--a track featuring Lombardo's fierce beat-keeping, crunching bass and electric guitars from Jack Dangers, Spooky's tweaky atmospherics, and Chuck D himself on vocals--the project makes perfect sense. DRUMS OF DEATH emerges at the intersection of the most progressive and aggressive music of the 1980s, '90s, and 2000s; it suggests that the line between hip-hop, hardcore metal, and the outer reaches of electronica has always been thin and somewhat arbitrary.

Chuck D raps on two other tracks ("B-Side Wins Again" and "Public Enemy #1"), and MC Dalek guests on "Assisted Suicide." However, most of the album is instrumental, focusing on Lombardo's thunderous pyrotechnics, Spooky's evocative textures and samples, and the contributions of additional musicians, most notably guitarist Vernon Reid. The record shifts from metal ("Kultur Krieg") to futuristic jazz ("The Art of War [Back to the Lab]") to the avant-garde (the collage experiment "Incipit Zarathustra") in a joyous disregard for conventional categories. The results remind us that those categories aren't very necessary in the first place.

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