VA: Chaos Restored 2, Mixed and Messed With by Justin Martin
Buzzin' Fly

Coming fast on the heels of 2007's debut Chaos Restored, San Francisco-based Justin Martin inaugurates his follow-up mix CD for Buzzin' Fly by pairing a seductive Barry White-styled voice-over (“Hey, baby, I think it's about time I let you know how I feel”) with mournful strings before springing into action with DJ Koze's swinging house cut “Let's Love.” Laid down in August 2008, it's an auspicious beginning to a scenic and predictably offbeat travelogue that includes side-trips into jubilant funk-house, quirky minimal techno, Latin-funk, tripped-out tech-house, and even one section that's so reminiscent of “The Robots” it has to be intended as a Kraftwerk homage (the group's trademark synthesizer melodies are augmented by vocodered singing and even train sounds).

Listeners familiar with Martin's previous mix will expect to hear inspired flourishes on the new one and they won't be disappointed: at one point, a bass clarinet's goose-like honk meanders over a charging tech-house pulse, and in one particularly inspired moment, Radiohead's “Nude” gets a stirring makeover (when the group made the song openly available online, Martin downloaded the parts and proceeded to give the haunting tune the future-funk treatment). Hearing Thom Yorke's voice sluicing over Martin's clockwork beats lends Chaos Restored 2 a distinctiveness that separates it from other mixes. Martin remixes a number of tunes too, including Marshall Jefferson's strutting house cut “Mushrooms” which features a laconic raconteur's trippy recollection of “walking on clouds” after ingesting the titular items. Cuts by Stateless (a Henrik Schwarz remix of “Bloodstream”), Dapayk Solo (“50mann50hz”), Loco Dice (“M Train To Brooklyn”), and fellow Buzzin' Fly act Stimming (“Kleine Nachtmusik”) also dot the landscape, and Justin even makes room for a jungle-inflected version of brother Christian's “Elephant Fight” plus his own “My Angelic Demons,” scheduled to be issued soon as a stand-alone release on Buzzin' Fly.

November 2008