- Since moving on from playing in punk and hip hop groups, Luke Vibert has established himself as a highly respected DJ and producer. Immensely prolific, Vibert has released music under a number of stage names, like Wagon Christ and Amen Andrews, through trusted electronic labels Warp, Ninja Tune and Planet Mu. The guy is an amorphous, genre-mashing veteran of the underground and October sees his first release for 2015 in the full length Bizarster.

Bizarster is compiled like a best-of flex but with fresh compositions. Kind of like Radiohead’s In Rainbows, in that the experimentation and melding of styles after a considerable amount of time has lead to a body of work that, on the surface, carries the easily identifiable marks of the artist but once you sink your teeth into it you find that it makes use of everything they’ve subsumed in the past. So, where Thom Yorke’s warbling falsetto is the signifier that will either immediately excite you or fill you with dread, Vibert’s heavy use of breakbeat samples and R’n’B grooves is consistently used as the glue for his collages.

Over the twenty-plus years Vibert has been making electronic music, he has experimented with acid house, techno, jungle and breakcore, to name a few. It is here in Bizarster that you’ll find Vibert playing the role of the traditional DJ but that he is mashing together electronic sub-genres instead of stand alone songs. You’ll hear it on track Officer’s Club which kicks off with disco samples and breaks down into a footwork bridge. Or the acid-jazz cuts on Doozit that fade into the haze of a trad. dubstep space. Vibert is playing uber-DJ.

Ultimately, Bizarster does weigh up as a celebration of all things DJ. It experiments with the light meshing of sub-genres but essentially it’s about ensuring the listener has fun. One of the consistent criticisms of Vibert’s material is that it’s too easy to listen to. Still, given that at one end of the electronic spectrum you have a selection of ghost producers pumping out the sugar for the fluorescent masses and at the other Lee Bannon and Richard D. James drip feeding the more avant garde and abstract, Vibert’s post-modernist party effect is most welcome. Especially if he continues to produce fun cuts like the punny I Can Phil It? with its Phil Collins sample, or the self reflexive Power Press with its introductory soundbite of a toddler explaining the finer points of button mashing.

Bizarster is a master class for the modern DJ. It’s not about the biggest drop or the most hypnotic rhythms, it’s about bringing the party for the block, for the club, through the use of popular song and an in-depth knowledge of electronica; oh and most importantly, don’t you dare take yourself seriously.

- Nick Rodwell.