Damage Control (CD)

Son of successful artist Israel Zohar and the half-brother of singer Alma Zohar, Matan Zohar aka Mat Zo made his name with trance singles along with some drum'n'bass tracks under the name MRSA. His "whatever sounds good" attitude finds him in line with other similarly rangy EDM artists who released genre-spanning LPs in 2013. But while the competition seemed to be note-spinning and waiting for a dominating stylistic change to help inspire them upwards, Zo's Damage Control suggests he really does love "whatever sounds good." Here, it all sounds somewhere between very good and excellent as key cut "Pyramid Scheme" brings Public Enemy's Chuck D aboard for some funky disco uplift, while "The Sky" with Linnea Schossow could be dubbed vocal trance, although it feels much more fresh and new than that tag implies. Electro, techno, dubstep, EDM, and many other genres that require a programmer's handbook fly about the album, and Zo's pre-release declaration that old Chemical Brothers albums were an influence rings true, as the effort hangs together as well as Dig Your Own Hole. Beautiful beatless numbers like "Superman Lost" are just icing on the cake, making Damage Control a much easier album to recommend than it is to classify. ~ David Jeffries, Rovi