Peverelist's music is so thoroughly
dubstep
that I can't imagine anyone other than hardcore fans of the genre will get much out of it. You can recommend, say, Burial or Joker to dubstep newbies because at least the former's vocals and the latter's psychedelic touches might provide a way "in" to (more or less) instrumental music that can be pretty forbidding in its starkness. How do you review an album like
Jarvik Mindstate
, which could care less about the needs of listeners from outside the scene, for a general interest-ish publication like Pitchfork without shrugging through a 600 word "caveat emptor"?
So please understand that
Jarvik Mindstate
is not an album designed for indie rockers looking to spice up their iPods. Peverelist is making music for people like himself, people who've been following the UK's bass-centric and heavily syncopated post-jungle dance scene for most of its decade-plus history. That said, if you've got the Forward logo tattooed on your forearm and know Zed Bias' real name (without consulting Wikipedia), there are pleasures to be found here, most them nostalgia-based. As someone who's spent far too much money on UK dance imports myself, I enjoy the way the jittery loop on "Yesterday I Saw the Future" echoes the "nature sounds" ambiance once found on hundreds of Good Looking-era jungle tracks. And the title track is another intriguing, gloom-drunk Bristolian twist on acid house minimalism, just with the BPM turned down a bit since the days of Full Cycle and V.
Faint praise, perhaps, but it'd be fibbing to say these tracks are going to inspire people to grab non-ravers by the lapels and force them to listen. Perhaps, like me, you're a long-time dance fan who still enjoys hearing someone remodel old genres (jungle, techno, IDM) into new shapes (dubstep), provided the producer in question is overflowing with wit/invention/idiosyncracies. Burial wasn't exactly doing much "new" either, at least if you'd heard a few Dem 2 and Horsepower Productions singles, something the producer has all but admitted in interviews. But at least he brought his own curious obsessions (that downcast vibe, that weather-beaten fidelity) to the always potentially ignoble art of influence mining. The real problem with
Jarvik Mindstate
is that there's just not much
personality
on display. It's a competent genre exercise that hovers right on the dangerous edge between "pleasant diversion" and "inessentiality."