Nuff X - Undefined

Hear The Track Here

When I reviewed Nuff X's Heaven (April 2005) I was - to say the least - well underwhelmed. There again, first appearances, you know what I mean. Gotta watch them. Besides, the software Nuff was using at the time sucked, and I think he already knew that. Zip forward a year and zoom into Open Your Eyes and See Me Screaming (August 2006) and you can smell the scorched rubber from his passing; having found his own distinct brand of musical mayhem there's no stopping him. As an electronica artist, he's well on the disturbing side; his disjointed, cut-up style will obviously not appeal to everyone, and then there's the experimental side that occasionally surfaces...and Undefined is a bit of both.

Undefined is certainly the first impression you will get, but this track is anything if but undefined - there's a very specific flow and feel to the peice that comes over time and plays. Musical references I got from the bucketload but one stands out as blindingly obvious even though Nuff probably never heard of them - this is worthy of some of the finer early stuff done by the Soft Machine - and thanks to Nuff's English vocals sounds like them too. Mind you, let me temper this excitement by saying the the Soft Machine were some pretty wild stuff, and you needed to be pretty out there yourself to get anything from it other than a blinding headache.

Hey, maybe that's what they mean by 'it's a blinder!'.

Whatever it is, Undefined, is after several n dozen plays well established in my Weird and Wonderful collection and will probably eventually be offered a home. I'm certain a whole lot of that must have to do with the aforementioned Soft Machine connection, but ultimately that's just a reference. Nuff X delivers on the back end with a track of great big musical muscles, some very neat arrangement and a very different approach - well up to his usual clever standard, and in some senses surpassing it. To my mind Undefined is the most seamless Nuff X track I have heard yet, and one of the smartest too. The 'glitchiness' of other tracks is somewhat tempered here, making this an infinitely more accessible track on lots of levels. I think it's time this artist was seen as being markedly different from the crowd.

MUST HAVE for Nuff's many fans, Highly Recommended nonetheless.