Black Meteoric Star – S/T (2009) [DFA] // Grade: B

If you’re little more than a casual fan of house music, someone who appreciates it but doesn’t necessarily listen to a lot of it at home, you’re probably better off skipping Gavin Russom’s acid house solo project altogether. Not to dismiss its quality—Russom, also half of the ambient Delia and Gavin, shows some serious brilliance here, manipulating both vintage and homemade machines into an album’s worth of single live takes. It’s just that BMS is so deeply immersed in repetitive TRAX-era beats, it can be difficult to hear anywhere but the dancefloor.

But it doesn’t seem like Russom intended the album for much else. Black Meteoric Star builds exactly like an hour-long live set, from the steady Moroder-influenced intro “Death Tunnel” to the frantic climax of “Dominatron” and “Anthem” and then the sleazy, 18-minute comedown “Dawn”.  The aggressive arpeggios and driving Roland 303 beats develop in that slow, almost imperceptible way that makes the most sense in a club (unless you’re inclined to the decoding of Russom’s processes and machines, in which case you’ll listen to this thing  at home for hours on repeat). Sure, other producers work around the same issues—Legowelt and Kill Memory Crash, for instance—but where they but where they take the DJ Pierre inspiration and turn it into something slightly more accessible, Russom seems to care only about making BMS authentic. Which, in effect, makes the album both polarizing and utterly captivating.

BMS does have a few undeniable weak spots, though, even if Russom totally succeeds on the authentic tip. The almost sweetly emotional “Dream Catcher” may be a necessary breath of fresh air after 35 minutes of intense freneticism, but it drags on long enough to feel less like a respite than a serious buzzkill. And the stripped-bare “Death Tunnel”, however decent a track on its own, doesn’t stand up to the complexity of the rest of the album. Still, BSM accomplishes what it sets out to do: conjure the intense, drug-fueled underground Chicago scene of the late 80s with minimal modern embellishments. And any issues aside, the album often feels worth it for that effort alone.

- Rue Sauvage