Brian Tarquin and Chris Ingram have been honored with an Emmy award for their soundtrack work in TV and film, and that experience shows on this, their second album together as
Asphalt Jungle. Spend 30-seconds listening to their exhilarating blend of grungy electro grooves, lickety-split breakbeats, reggae toasts and metallic guitars and you'll immediately understand why MTV invited them to provide music for the Road Rules show and why
Chumbawamba tapped them to create the dance remix for their hit song "Tubthumping." But the real question is whether the album hangs together as a whole -- it's one thing to throw a bunch of fun and exciting dance music elements together to create a scintillating track or two, but can you make the excitement ebb and flow throughout an entire album? Apparently you can. The aptly titled
Enjoy This Trip flows pleasingly and logically from guitar-driven techno ("Boogie Body," "Bronx Beat") to disco-fried jungle ("Galway") and from genuine German industrialism ("Phatt Man") to Gregorian electro ("Hallelujah") and back again, ending with a brilliant breakbeat-heavy remix of the Bob Marley classic "Don't Rock the Boat." It's a rare dance music album that offers equal rewards to the head and the feet, and this is one of them. Very highly recommended. ~ Rick Anderson