DJ Scotch Egg: Drumized

When the Nintendo Gameboy arrived on U.S. shores in 1989, American teens and preteens alike gladly accepted another technological tool (the other such weapon being the Sony Walkman) in the sullen, ongoing conflict between themselves and the imposing boredom/adults bloc: a chic, portable console that allowed one to play black-and-white video games anywhere, anytime. Pixilated, dinky-synth-diddled escape lay right at one's callused fingertips. So, get this: Japanese breakcore artist DJ Scotch Egg armed himself with four Gameboys and a mixer to create Drumized, and it's a 27-minute nostalgic doozy. Individual neon tones slingshot against, around, and through one another, spin, spike, and woosh, ping and pop and wink or—as on the title track—tinkle and skip across dense fields of digital static before vigorously fluctuating into quicksilver mush. "Scotch Boogy" dispatches several meth-addled, fluorescent algorithms to do battle with meowing-cat samples. "Scotch Metronorm" sounds exactly like what the title implies—a moderately intense game of Pong, which isn't saying much—except when it erupts, periodically, into a furious drumroll. Something of a doom metal send-up, "Scotch Stoner" slurs and smears scales of low notes into a foreboding dirge that's frequently strafed by bleep-bloop gunfire and hyperactive breakbeats; "Scotch Jazzzz" transforms Super Mario Brothers dungeon levels into a fast-forwarded, white-hot fusion session.