Sutekh: Notes from Doctor Island
Soul Jazz

The ever-imaginative and always-unpredictable Sutekh (San Francisco-based Seth Horvitz) offers up two whimsical sound collages on this latest Soul Jazz 12-inch. Though it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to label them ‘dance' cuts, they're definitely ‘dance' cuts from some other galaxy, given their gleefully experimental character. While a bumping techno-funk pulse churns below, the Context head wastes no time brewing up a hot-wired splatterfest of spastic jitters, squelchy splashes, and gaseous emissions in the A side's “Kill the Monkey.” Though the tune oozes hints of rave, trance, funk, and techno, it comes out sounding like nothing else but Sutekh, pure and simple. On the flip side, Horvitz sweetens an equally intricate crisscross of swizzles and creaks with nimble synth melodies in “The Diamond House” but grounds it with a skankier house lope. Though Sutekh created the tracks for the film version of Gene Wolfe's Nebula Award-winning novella “The Death of Doctor Island,” the disc's oddball title is perfectly in keeping with the release's overall vibe.

April 2007