The Cinematic Orchestra: Every Day

Calling The Cinematic Orchestra a dance-music act is a stretch, but it's hard to conceive of the group's new Every Day coming into existence without the storied history of drum 'n' bass. After fizzling into a zero-sum battle between chin-stroking austerity and hard-fast nihilism, the strain of drum 'n' bass that didn't evolve into U.K. garage began a slinky march toward acid-jazz and broken-beats—two intertwined genres that re-calibrated jungle conceits for the sultry sounds of old soul and organic fusion. The aptly named Cinematic Orchestra plays elemental acid-jazz, summoning the cosmic scope of Alice Coltrane and the slanted, string-swept R&B of Minnie Riperton. But the subtle details of Every Day speak to an evolution that helps articulate old-fashioned beauty in newfound ways. The album-opening "All That You Give" cooks up a gently jazzy breeze, with swooning harps and chimes wavering over a downtempo walking bass line and purring vocals by Fontella Bass, who sang with the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. The stunning result serves as a manifesto for the rest of the album, which grows bigger and grander at a deliriously mannered pace. "Burnout" builds into a simmering fusion exercise, winding airy guitar and electric piano around an ominous electronic gurgle and an overheated keyboard vamp reminiscent of The Doors. On "Flite," the group shows off its drum 'n' bass roots with rattling drum fills and rhythmic shifts that give the obsessive programming a highly approachable disguise. On the surface, Every Day is a superbly melodic rewrite of cosmic jazz-fusion touchstones, but The Cinematic Orchestra's gilded production reconfigures minutiae—drum sounds, turntable scratching, slurring stringed bass—into hooks as worthy as anything cooked up by melody and harmony. The rhythm virus that infests The Cinematic Orchestra also wiggles its way into Recloose's Cardiology, which covers Detroit techno sheen with a nice wooden overlay. A protégé of fusion-minded Detroit figurehead Carl Craig, Recloose crams Talking Book-era Stevie Wonder funk into a hyperactive rhythmic template on "Ain't Changin'." "Ghost Stories" stretches a slice of up-down reggae bounce onto a rubbery worm of a beat. Searching and ambitiously understated, Cardiology charts a techno-informed trip through the earthier realms of soul and funk, alternating between song-oriented digressions (the dizzy "Can't Take It") and inviting soundscapes (the warmly tingling "Kapiti Dream"). With a fetish for both naturalistic drum sounds and future-funk exploration, Recloose grows one of the year's best electronic-music albums from a fertile mix of soil and space dust.