Various Artists – [unclassified] [2011; [adult swim]]

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Eighteen tracks of steady-beat techno, leaning into downtempo pacing while layering touches in all over the place.  Bass commands most of the songs, while the higher-pitched inclusions tend to be dragged over the top in fragile-sounding ways.  The points of acceleration that do crop up feel, for the most part, like they’re just dressing on the slow-moving bass bump loops, which lends a sense of hard separation between the two ends.  There’s plenty of technical skill and careful programming on display, but very few of the songs feel like they actually do much of anything beyond following the loops through some light ramping.  A nice snapshot of electronic groups just under the mainstream radar at the time of its release, and some generally chill beat atmospheres, but not much more than that.

Various Artists – Adult Swim Singles Program 2012 [2012; [adult swim]]

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This thirteen-track compilation brings together popular counter-culture acts of the time, including Com Truise, Wavves, Death Grips, and Flying Lotus, among others, for a collection which eagerly swerves through a broad range of styles and dispositions.  Electronic, garage rock, metal, dreampop, and more are served up without much rhyme or reason to the track ordering, and while the picks are almost unanimously enjoyable, or at least stylish, the jumbling doesn’t do the experience any favors beyond underlining the already-evident variety.  As a result, while it does offer an informative cross-cut of the year’s top alternative acts (as estimated by the cable cartoon channel), that’s about all it does.