Drew Daniels is something of a bad ass. He is one half of Matmos. He is also a professor of English at Johns Hopkins. And, after being challenged by Matthew Herbert to make a house record, he released “Do You Party?” in 2002. This album has held up unbelievably well, I think, as a dance record. The collage and found-sound techniques so expertly explored by Matmos are here channeled into extremely quirky, but deeply funky, house cuts. “Everybody’s Soft”, the intro track, has one of those funk synth lines that, when it drops at 0:55, plants a sneer on your face and a hop in your two-step. The heavily layered cut-and-paste makes for some engaging, emotive (even house-y) tangents, but the track never loses sight of that groove. On top of all that (or should I say, beneath it all), the minimalist glitchy percussion has a refinement and a stereo sculpture that sounds great after almost ten years. Yikes. Get that sneer ready when rollin’ this out.
