- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
One of the best instrumental albums you are likely to hear this year.
-
Incorporating free-jazz squonk into sultry bossa nova with tempo-defying breaks and ethereal atmospherics is no easy feat, but somehow, the London duo pull it off.
-
This sort of thing may be n steps removed from the dancefloor, but it's also thrillingly physical, even while it tantalizes the mind.
-
Alternative PressWhile it doesn't flow with the breathless ingenuity of their earlier albums, it's still a cut above 90 percent of today's electronica. [#147, p.109]
-
MagnetTheir most sustained work... It's sometimes ethereal, sometimes sedate, sometimes dissonant--but it's always artufl, quoting tiny fragments of Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and Miles Davis to steer the music toward a smart new seriousness. [#47, p.122]
-
If anything, Disappeared reestablishes Spring Heel Jack as drum-n-bass experts, gifted at layered percussion, and erudite at unsettling listeners with an uneasy ambience.
-
What 'Disappeared', in all its stealthy innovation and breathless compendium of sounds, amounts to, is a kind of avant-garde musique concrète - difficult noises shrouded in a cloak of accessibility.
-
Spring Heel Jack exist in that increasingly exciting no-man's land where clubland and modern jazz call a truce and have a kickabout.
-
The album as a whole leans a little too far toward dissonance and gratuitous noisemaking.
-
Disappeared hints at the cathartic spillage of drum 'n' bass, while also dropping beats from Motown, rock, and beyond. But unfortunately the melodies that were once so incisive and pliant soon grow monotonous and alien.
-
Spring Heel Jack's latest seems so willfully irritating, careening from one idea to the next, with little regard for such pop conventions as melody, rhythm, or harmony, that one can't help but wonder -- albeit fleetingly -- if it just might point toward a whole new style of music.
Awards & Rankings
There are no user reviews yet.