Jason Forrest

Also known as the fake Donna Summer, Jason Forrest comes with an album that runs from frantic to amusingly calm to absurd and back again. Opening with the alternately catchy, odd, boppy and frantic "Spectacle To Refute All Judgements,” Forrest smacks you in the face with his arrangement skills while still managing to successfully reference disco, ’80s piano pop, raunchy rock and electronica. Think big here. It’s an extremely demanding song which, strangely, segues into the significantly smaller-sounding but no less energetic "Satan Cries Again.” The following song, "An Event,” sounds like it’s a field recording of a helicopter accompanied by a twinkling piano 2/4 that degenerates into psychedelic feedback and finally skitters off into drum & bass rhythms that might go perfectly with a Douglas Copeland novel. And then there’s "INKhUK,” a real disco ditty. The whole thing smacks of sarcasm in the way he’s dovetailed his genres (hello plunderphonics!), but at the same time he clearly possesses a reverence for the over-the-top aspects of the big genres he’s mishmashed. It’s a really exciting album for both the action created by the mix and for the fact that he’s managed to make it work. Innovative like mad!