Solvent's Jason Amm is an anomaly among new-jack new-wave producers. He mines IDM and techno's fetish for tricked-out drum sounds like a gurning tinkerer while still swooning with melody and melancholy; think Simon and Garfunkel trading in folk guitar for plaintive synths.
As compiled here over an exhaustive (but not exhausting) 27 tracks (including remixes from Adult., Alter Ego, etc.), Amm's sound seems to take place in a parallel universe, far away from hipster concerns and Williamsburg stylistic tics. Where electroclash gave in to the herky-jerkiness of drum machines and tried to find smirky rock elements in the result, Amm bubbles and percolates around the metallic irony of the genre to find something as utopian as it is sincere. He'd probably be the first to admit that when it sounds this good, it's hard not to hear it elsewhere, be it in the fumbling drum intro of Steve Winwood's “Higher Love” or in Postal Service's sloping, loping intro to “Downtown,” both of which show up uncannily cross-referenced in tracks here, proof that great minds program alike. But beyond the sounds, Amm's talent is caring more about the ghosts than the machines: He tops off “In Light” and “Wish” with unintelligible computer voices so catchy you still want to sing along to them, sounding like Sigur Rós for the Soft Cell set.
Demonstration Tape's hit is “My Radio,” which, along with too many other tracks, winds up on big DJ-mix comps as that weird little melodic end-of-the-set track. Gathered here, such tracks make the case that Amm is a romantic, Bryan Ferry to James Murphy's fat white duke. As such, Demonstration Tape is Blade Runner redone as a Garden State-ish indie flick, with Amm the Vangelis-meets-Shins maestro of its soundtrack. Golf clap, bravo!
