Green Velvet: Whatever

With "Flash," a classic single that's become a ubiquitous mix-disc standard for DJs of all stripes, Chicago-house poet Green Velvet painted a rich sociological portrait of the rave scene's love-hate relationship with paranoia. Taking parents on a lyrical tour of "Club Bad, where all the bad little kiddies go," he set hilarious mock reportage of balloon-sucking, joint-smoking club kids on top of gamefully menacing beats that crackled like cameras, playing into every kid's worst fears while also amping up the visceral rush of the forbidden. That kind of brilliantly ambivalent, pathos-saturated pathology plays out all over Whatever. As a producer, Green Velvet is a master of the kind of darkly banging jack-track house that evokes dank airplane hangars and prickly acid nightmares. Everything in the house formula is a weapon for him, from the sinister synth squiggle to the heartbeat-stealing kick of bass. But with lyrical accompaniment that splits the difference between menacing reality and button-pushing satire, he has a way of twisting conventions into impenetrable, inviting traps. On "La La Land," a new-wave-inspired near-pop song, he makes a mantra out of "Something about those little pills / Unreal / The thrills / They yield / Until / They kill / A million brain cells," stretching his syllables into a hyper-extended monotone like Eminem. It's ridiculous to take Green Velvet's deadpan mix of celebration and condemnation at face value, so even straightforward songs like the raging "Stop Lyin'" and the vocoder-intoned, freaks-come-at-night hymn "Sleepwalking" come off as ingenious parodies of themselves. Track-wise, Whatever is covered with a newly glossy sheen that sounds like Green Velvet's play for the trance floor. But John Digweed has a long way to go before even approaching the nuances of "Waitin' 4 The Day To End," which sets a wired raver in Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" painting and perfectly encapsulates Green Velvet's singular ability to make words and beats work together.