(Anticon)

More Nosdam than you could sample on an MPC 5000.

Pretty Swell Explode is a double album of remixes, b-sides, rarities and unreleased material. For this reason there isn’t a great deal of continuity to the record, though it is packed with lots of content. Odd Nosdam (AKA David P. Madson) is the co-founder of San Francisco Bay Area label Anticon, and an accomplished DJ and producer in his own right. His remixes of notable acts like Boards Of Canada and Black Moth Super Rainbow carry a weight of credibility here, though they seem heavy-handed at times. Madson’s beats and samples on the first disc are full of garage strangeness, and slip into bombast on more than one occasion. This is contrasted on the second disc, which is an EP of ambient works that focus on tape machine modulation and reverberated droning. The shortness and sparseness is a welcome reprieve from the aural assault of D1, but there’s still little continuity. This lack of context makes the greater tracks stand out, while the lesser ones struggle to justify their relevance. A bunch of cool multimedia content sweetens the deal, but reinforces the notion that this is a record aimed mainly Nosdam/Anticon fans. Is that a bad thing? Not really.

JAKEB SMITH

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