Matzak is -- get this -- a French pharmacist who moonlights as a purveyor of clubby electronica. And truth be told, he's much more than a dabbler. The music on his sophomore album,
Bring Me the Moon, is not the kind of dilettantish, by-the-numbers thumpa-thumpa you'd expect from someone who does this kind of thing as an afterthought. Instead, you get a wide variety of well thought-out variations on house, techno, and hip-hop themes: "On the Sofa" (one of two tracks featuring the very fine vocalist Tori) opens the program with a brilliantly complex and viscerally irresistible funk beat before things start settling down into a steady, house-derived groove; "Unpredictable Sunday" is a bit on the generic side, but "Disco Mobster" raises the complexity level and the amount of musical interest, while "Stockholm 1973" infuses a bubbling dub flavor into the proceedings and "Not Safe for Work" (featuring MC Forensic, who boasts the best hip-hop stage name ever) nicely blends thudding house and graceful rapping. The album's two best tracks are two of its least similar: "Magneta" evokes 1960s minimalism as it builds careful but powerfully, layer upon layer; "Bring Me the Moon" is instrumental hip-hop with subtle flourishes of turntablism and funkily displaced handclaps. Everything on this album is well worth hearing. ~ Rick Anderson