by Rick AndersonThe press materials describe Zomby's debut full-length as "the rave album that was never made in the early '90s," which seems a fairly apt way of getting the idea across -- though in fact, this batch of tracks would have sounded distinctly strange at any rave of the period. Much of it draws heavily on dubstep, a genre that only emerged fully in the late 2000s; "Euphoria," for example, is particularly dubsteppy (with a decided emphasis on "dub"), as is the dancehall-flavored "Get Sorted," which takes the same general structure as the preceding (and inferior) "Tears in the Rain" and spices it up with sharper samples and a more compelling beat. A couple of other tracks -- notably the album's witty opening track and "GTI" -- incorporate explicitly jungle-derived rhythms, nicely complicating the album's general texture. What are more startling are the house tracks, which truly would have sounded quite at home in an early-'90s rave, though the house/jungle/hip-hop hybrid track "Pillz" (an initially exciting but ultimately just tiring number) would have left more than one raver scratching his head in puzzlement. Most interesting of … » Read more