Grit

Ever since Martin Swan's Mouth Music project sputtered to a disappointing halt around 2000, there had been a hole in the music world that was waiting to be filled by someone else willing to take unabashedly traditional Scottish music and juxtapose it with unashamedly slamming breakbeats and 21st century production techniques. Martyn Bennett had actually been working that territory since his eponymous debut in 1995 but really came into his own in the years since; Grit is a tour de force of avant-folk fusion music on which he manages to craft irresistibly hip-shaking beats and bring them to bear on traditional material without sacrificing any of the stark beauty of his source material. "Chanter" is a simultaneous celebration of house music, bagpipe technique, and the Scottish vocal tradition of puirt a beul; "Nae Regrets Medley" samples an old man singing what sounds like a variation on the bawdy song "Bonny Black Hare," and throws it in with metal-edged guitars, orchestral strings, and a big beat rhythm that would make Fatboy Slim weep all over his decks; the aptly titled "Rant" makes exquisitely intricate use of layered and rhythmically manipulated vocal samples, dubwise sound manipulation, and a Shetland fiddle. On "Wedding," Bennett creates a minimalist but richly textured quilt of sound with an altered fiddle, Gaelic spoken-word samples, and eventually, a simple one-two beat. That last track is more interesting than fun, but the rest of the album comes down solidly on the latter side. Brilliant. ~ Rick Anderson