It doesn't really seem that long ago that the musical designation "fusion" meant a cross between jazz and rock. These days, it appears to mean a cross between nu jazz and acid jazz, two dance music genres that are more or less indistinguishable to all but the hippest club cognoscenti. That kind of fusion is the bailiwick of Duplex Inc, a quartet which is itself a fusion of two DJ teams: Robin Hofmann, Florian Pflüger,
Rino Spadaveccia and Felix Stecher. The sound they create on their debut full-length is a fascinating mish-mash of elements, from the funky blues of "She'll Stay" (featuring legendary Berlin bluesman Wayne Martin) at the beginning of the program to the dark, dubwise groove of "Sound of the Ebu" at the end. In between there are excursions into a sort of strutting, broken beat Braziliana courtesy of Barbara Padron Hernandez, some jittery acid jazz with vocals by
Alice Russel, a master class in subtle but advanced turntablism, and one track that sounds like an unholy marriage between On-U Sound and a 1960s spy movie soundtrack. You may come away from this album feeling like you needed eight ears just to hear it all, but it's worth the effort and definitely worth repeated listenings. ~ Rick Anderson