We Remain Faded has the cool savvy usually found in better hip-hop records and would be the ideal album to soundtrack skateboard or dirt bike trick film footage. With surgical beats, fader perforated vocals and Ginsu-sharp IDM breaks, We Remain Faded inspires an adrenaline rush track after track. Headphone Science is what might happen if DJ Cam dabbled in IDM, infusing an attitude-driven strut rather than the customary sprint found in the likes of Phonem. The tracks are satisfyingly long while scientist Dustin Craig outdoes himself with mad skills. This album rocks.

Prolific Montréal-based experimental label No Type hit the jackpot with the stunning CD debut of Dustin Craig’s newest alter identity. Oakland’s Craig, who records also as Elasticlego, delivers a thematically consistent, listener-friendly IDM gem with this 7-track release. At the risk of taking away from the originality of the EP, I might describe it as the genius offspring of Akufen’s short-splice sample methods and Timbaland’s catchy breakbeat production. Or, alternately, KRS-One meets Boards of Canada. Thick, heady hip hop beats flow under a perfectly textured barrage of staccato rap snippets. Missy Elliott on ketamine, perhaps? We Remain Faded’s only drawback is its 38-minute length, but sources inform us that Headphone Science’s full length, Consider The Problems, is due out later this year. Cutting edge Discman food.

Deconstructive strategies applied to rap, hiphop, film soundtracks, and poésie with interesting if mixed results. Reminds me a bit of the mid-80s experiments with parsed poetics, concrete poetry and early cut and paste composition.

For his first solo album (presented under the moniker Headphone Science), Dustin Craig put together a short, listener-friendly assemblage of intelligent, danceable tunes that don’t share the meticulous coldness of IDM. The music on We Remain Faded has a strongly whimsical, playful side that brings it close to the productions of Books on Tape and I Am Robot and Proud. The title track infuses dub into an otherwise IDM tune, thumping yet very ambient and gentle. Games and Larcenous take a very different direction. Sampled vocals steal the spotlight, pushing forward a warped hip-hop/techno sound that gets a bit too repetitive for its own good (the 10-minute Games would gain from a trip to the editing block). Air Bubble Material and To Dine in Distance are more substantial offerings and represent a much more fruitful direction for Craig. Cello (in the first track) and trumpet (in the second) hooks accompany beats that are just askew enough to get hold of your attention. They also emit a certain atmosphere of melancholia that works well with their sketchy melodies. Many electronica producers would have chosen to release these tracks under different monikers to sort them out by sub-styles and target them to specific audiences. The fact that Craig embraces his eclectic influences works to his advantage: We Remain Faded keeps the listener guessing while going down easy.

After a number of successful web releases with No Type, Subverseco, and Observatory, Dustin Craig has released his first CD under the name of Headphone Science. Cleaving closely to the two pieces of his name, Craig delivers six tracks of vocal cut-up flavored IDM that will fill your headphones nicely.

We Remain Faded is propelled along by a solid kick drum beat. Colored by thin shards of digital noise, the track washes over you with restful melodies that harkens back to Amber-era Autechre. If this is Craig’s nod to what has gone before, it is a very solid nod and well worth the price of admission for this eight-minute slice of blissful chilled ambience. Air Bubble Material is also chillout room material, colored with a little sharper tempo and the inclusion of droning cellos and sprightly plucked violins to the click and skitter of the digital beats.

Games finds Craig leaping forward to the more current phenomena of throwing cut-up hip-hop vocals into the mix. Like Amon Tobin and Prefuse 73, Craig slices and dices the vocal track over his beats and melodies, dropping his ADD-addled scat singer onto an otherwise laidback IDM track. Cut-up vocals populate the most of the remaining tracks on We Remain Faded, adding a certain amount of grit to an otherwise pristine electro-beat environment. Beats squelch and skitter, melodies caper and slink, and hip-hop voices are Ginsu’ed with gleeful abandon. The technique adds a human element (albeit a scattered and fragmented one) to an otherwise digital landscape. The closer Life Struggles Constant fuses the Autechre ambience of the beginning with the precise beats and echo-driven and cut-up vocals of the middle tracks into a thoroughly successful summation of what Headphone Science has to offer.

But just prior this closing statement, we have To Dine in Distance which, like We Remain Faded, pulls out all the stops. While the rest of the tracks on the record are solid players in the IDM field, these two tracks really make the record shine. To Dine in Distance is like the lost track from DJ Krush and Toshninori Kondo’s sublime Ki — Oku, filled with sharp beats and a lonely trumpet melody. Craig applies the same backmask and cut-up methodology to the trumpet line that he uses on the hip-hop vocals in the previous tracks. Tack on a lazy Spanish guitar player and a stolen conversation between distant lovers and we’ve got a solid winner on our hands.

Apparently Craig has a full-length release planned for later this year on Vienna-based Skylab Operations. You know I’ll be Googling up their site later tonight and bookmarking their shopping cart for the record’s eventual release. Craig’s work as Headphone Science is very good and We Remain Faded shows a deft hand that is worth adding to your collection.