Concentric Pleasures: '90s Electronica Says "UNKLE"

But the convergence of UNKLE, Van Hoen and Funki Porcini marks a convenient opportunity to evaluate the legacy of a certain strain of '90s electronica. These were all acts deemed cutting-edge in their day, and in many ways, they were. Funki Porcini's sampled fantasias owed everything to American hip-hop, but their jokey, free-associative sprawl, lounge kitsch and cool affect belonged to a particularly '90s mindset, po-mo for its own sake and not particularly concerned with anything beyond head nodding. Van Hoen fused the timbral experiments of both ambient and industrial music with the breakbeat experiments of drum 'n' bass, mixing signifiers of the multicultural street with a goth-inspired gloom. While the light-handed touch of vintage Funki Porcini comes to seem increasingly irrelevant, Van Hoen's equally abstract mood music paved the way for Burial's dread dubstep and the unsettling, classically inflected fare of labels like Type.

UNKLE even more fully represented the zeitgeist of their initial decade. Founding member James Lavelle was better known as the head of Mo' Wax, the label that brought us DJ Shadow and La Funk Mob, Dr. Octagon and Urban Tribe, drawing links between American hip-hop, Detroit techno and England's post-rave culture. For a time, it felt like the most relevant label in the world. UNKLE were more like Lavelle's vanity project, a chance to earn his producer's credits alongside more experienced beatmakers like DJ Shadow — who co-produced UNKLE's early singles and debut album — and an opportunity to show off a Rolodex fattened by years of A&R deals, as he recruited everyone from Thom Yorke to Metallica's Jason Newsted to the Beastie Boys' Mike D to take guest turns on the mic.

But by the time UNKLE strongarmed their way into the music press, Mo' Wax was gone — swallowed up by the major label A&M by the end of the '90s — and Lavelle was showing an inauspicious lack of focus, performing as a progressive-house DJ and putting his name to a clothing line and vinyl toys. And UNKLE's recordings followed suit. As leisure electronica lost its novel luster, and Lavelle cast about for new ways to distinguish his brand, he seemed to invest most of his efforts in corralling cameos, rather than writing memorable music.

If Mo' Wax's legacy was a catholic approach to genre that helped lead to dubstep and the restless joy of artists like Flying Lotus, UNKLE's legacy was Santigold and N.A.S.A., studio-system acts where the lawyers and project managers held sway. And Lavelle's cobbled-together albums haven't necessarily helped music's cause in an era where, as a product, it's constantly being devalued. Never Never Land, from 2003, was followed three years later by a four-disc compilation of remixes. War Stories, a 2007 alt-rock pastiche featuring Josh Homme and Ian Astbury, among others, was shortly followed by More Stories, a B-sides comp. And the following year's End Titles ... Stories for Film, which itself merely bundled together an array of soundtrack cuts and advertising commissions, managed to milk a second album, End Titles ... Redux, out of the grab bag. Lavelle's release strategy was modeled after remasters of classic back-catalog titles, but deluging us with bonuses only made the "original" versions seem that much less essential. As Project Runway's Tim Gunn would stress, you need to know when to edit.

UNKLE's new album is so stuffed with collaborations that I get exhausted just reading the track listing. (It doesn't help that Mark Lanegan and The Black Angels are the biggest names featured. And yes, when guest performances are this lacking in personality, marquis draw matters, by default.) The music is fine — a moody electronic/rock fusion that neither thrills nor offends. It's probably decent makeout music. It's certainly not original.

"Heavy Drug" is every bit the The Stone Roses homage its title promises; "The Answer" is Madchester meets the Pixies; "Follow Me Down" is Beth Orton gone garage rock (in dub). "On a Wire" picks up the Pixies again, this time inserting their searing guitar leads into a dusky chug attributable to The Cure's "A Forest" — and the song also bears more than a passing resemblance to Sideshow and Cortney Tidwell's recent "Television," a song that it's hard to believe Lavelle hasn't heard. There's a nagging sense of a basic lack of commitment here, even if it's just a commitment to a certain style — ironic, given that style was once Lavelle's trump card.

Funki Porcini's On is actually pretty good, a far more musical and inspired collection of ideas than the acid-jazz rehash you might expect. Being partial to Van Hoen's brand of sweeping, pop-informed ambient, I've always liked him the best of the bunch, so it's a no-brainer that I find Where Is the Truth's electro-acoustic songscapes a worthwhile listen.

Still, I'm not going to argue that they're exactly novel; nothing much is, these days. What went wrong with so much '90s electronica, I think, is that it prided itself on its exceptionalism. Like a real-life enactment of James Murphy's quip, "I hear your band sold its guitars and bought a synthesizer," from his sardonic scene report "Losing My Edge," '90s electronic music was said to inspire tribal allegiance, as new fans forever gave up rock or hip-hop in favor of the One True Path that electronic music promised.

But in the end, it wasn't exceptional. So-called "electronic music" shares 90 percent of its DNA with virtually any rock, pop, hip-hop, etc., that's not an all-acoustic jug band on a back porch somewhere. Its purchase was on lifestyle. It was democratic and aspirational, an expression of Moore's Law and the booming consumer economy; it prized mood over commitment, attitude over subculture. And, certain legacy dance-music cultures aside, it was assimilated into the broader ecology of pop. In a circuitous way, you can thank Mo' Wax for Lady Gaga — just as you can thank Lady Gaga for giving Van Hoen something to continue brooding about.