Kouhei Matsunaga — Self VA.

It’s part of the lifespan of any genre to be expanded radically, to find itself crossbred and mutated and ultimately become not a container but a starting point. It happened with jazz, it happened with pretty much every form of popular music, and it has most definitely happened with anything that gets nominally filed as “electronic”. What started with the smooth burble of Human League and Yaz has turned into the glitch-stutter-and-stretch of Autechre, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and—yep—Kouhei Matsunaga.

I doubt Matsunaga rings as many bells as the other two. It’s a shame, because he’s got his own laid-back vibe that depends more on texture than jarring contrast to be interesting—kind of what would happen if DJ Krush decided to go all-out glitch-hop. I encountered him first back when he paired up with Merzbow for a split disc that showed them both off at their pulsating best. It comes as no surprise to hear he’s also done a collab with Autechre’s own Sean Booth, so fans of the Ae are encouraged to tune in.

Here, Matsunaga has an entire disc to himself courtesy of Important Records—curators of many of the best recent Merzbow sides, no accident that—and he uses it for various forays into techno, glitch, hip-hop and anything else you might find parked in the same neighborhood. The disc has the flavor of an outtakes-and-B-sides collection—no real overall shape, but that doesn’t make it unlistenable and directionless. A big part of that may be due to the number of guest artists that pop in on various tracks (e.g., Leif Elggren). The track titles quite deliberately don’t give any clues to the content: “Material Blah Blah”, “Hand with Possibility” or just “3”, “7” and “L”. As abstract as most of it is, there are a couple moment of out-and-out hip-hop joy—“Pinly” (with rapper Internet Magic) or “1,2 rmx#3” (with former Jungle Brothers member Sensational)—which hint that Matsunaga could throw down a full-blown album of that kind without breaking a sweat.

If I give this disc only three stars, it’s not because of any major defects: this is really good environmental music that is never too far into the background or too upfront, and that’s a plus by itself. That said, Matsunaga doesn’t produce anything here the kind of spine-tingling authority and compulsive listenability that came with those other guys I mentioned when they’re at their best. But he’s got something going on that I’d love to hear refined further in future discs. I get the feeling the really killer KM record is yet to come, and what we have here is just a clearing of the throat.