Pitchfork

Though he conjures an instantly recognizable atmosphere from the moment his records begin to play, a new release by house/techno producer Ricardo Villalobos is also characterized by a slight apprehension in those seconds before you drop the stylus, as you wonder if you're going to walk away feeling like you've actually been had. Villalobos' sparest stretches of pure rhythm can be frustratingly opaque while still daring you to give the record just one more spin; even those who've called him a genius (like me) sometimes worry they're not in on some inscrutable gag. But where last December's "Fizheuer Zieheuer" single intoxicated (or irritated… see, I still can't decide) by stretching just a handful of parts across 37 minutes, the hour-plus Fabric 36 brims with the piled-up (and pilled-up) rhythmic layering that characterizes Villalobos at his most intriguing.

Fabric 36 is Villalobos' ravenously awaited mix CD, and it just happens to be blended entirely from his own new productions and remixes. These cut-and-paste percussion clinics would be already straining with detail as stand-alone tracks, but their interlocking beats become ever more complex in the virtuoso way Villalobos meshes them, as when the opening electronic tones of "Groove 1880" sprout acoustic cymbal accents and jazz snares nine minutes later during "Moongomery". The hyper-percussive top end of the mix is perpetually bustling, too: Peppering his tracks with preverbal hiccups, askew extraneous rhythms, and halting half-melodies is one of Villalobos' favorite (and most effective) tricks throughout Fabric 36-- both for keeping the listener engaged and for lending his music its trademark uneasy quality. Phantom voices are layered into bad-trip swirls on "Organic Tranceplant" and "Fumiyandric 2". Strange sizzling noises flare up during an otherwise austere drum track. Fabric 36 constantly slips and slides around multiple percussive pulses, yet remains utterly sensual.

If the snapping tick-tock of "Farenzer House" or the bouncy full-vocal cut "4 Wheel Drive" suggest the Villalobos of old-- standard electro-house with a case of the shivers and sniffles-- then the rumbling "Andruic and Japan" is the most audacious example yet of the Chilean producer's freehand approach to disassembling techno's grid. Over 12 minutes long, it drops thunderous bursts of arrhythmic wooden percussion over autistic percolation, shattering the mix's momentum. But slowly, Villalobos reconfigures those skull-crushing mallets back into the almighty 4/4. That (often nearly undetectable) hand ordering things is what keeps Fabric 36 from turning into flurry of spooky sound effects and aimless drum loops. Villalobos' barely-there melodies (like the descending deep-house organ hum in "Prevorent") and unerringly steady tempo float you downriver as swarms of beats circle overhead. It's that gentle but unyielding push that keeps even his most outré moments-- the woozy soccer stadium chant "Premier Encuentro Latino-Americano" bleeding into "Chropuspel Zündung", Villalobos smearing the cacophony of a sampled crowd into a jumbo jet roar-- from wrecking not only your head but your equilibrium.

Thanks to Villalobos' cheekily narcissistic tracklist, Fabric 36 is in the unenviable position of both having to deliver the arc of a great DJ mix and to stand as the first multi-track collection of mostly new Villalobos material in more than a year. In both cases, it can be judged a triumph, a controlled burst of rangy productivity that offers a full-spectrum look at Villalobos' various obsessions (the power of percussion, haunted house vibeology, dub science applied to Latin swing and Germanic snap, minimalism vs. maximalism). The ebb and flow of a heterogeneous DJ set makes it easier listening than the often grindingly static repetitions of 2004's Thé Au Harem D'Archimède, while it still offers moments so polyrhythmic that they make that earlier record sound downright ingratiating. Technically, it's just stunning-- the most alchemical digital-into-analog (and vice versa) home-listening DJ mix I've heard in years. And if you've ever felt on the wrong end of Villalobos' formalist stunts-- if you have a love/hate relationship with his mix of the engrossing and exasperating-- you can take comfort in the fact that while Fabric 36 is hardly pop, it repays your undivided attention from the first listen.