Spacetime Continuum

In this time of great cynicism, there's often a reluctance to engage the pleasant and beautiful side of life, especially in contemporary electronic music, where melody and harmony are often repressed by existentially inhuman desires for atonality. Jonah Sharp is one of the few who can step to that fine line of expression, bordering the garden of new age, but still close to the edge. His last album as Spacetime Continuum, Emit Ecaps, entailed a colourful offering of optimistic drum & bass and techno grooves. He also flexed those sounds with a jazzy kind of tension — closer to the feeling of hard bop than the predictability of acid jazz — and Double Fine Zone takes it even further. Sharp plays live drums on a few of the tracks and often programs his beats with a similar kick. He also jams with saxophonist Brian Iddenden and harmonica-meister Damien Masterson, and their interaction is nice; they often sound like a whole rather than a hybrid. The elements of electronics and live jazz seem neither out of time nor competitive with each other. Instead, they flow in the continuum of space and time that brings these mutual extremes of 20th century dance music together. Yet, the tracks are full of so much personality, that these historical significance’s hardly even matter.