The New Law considers itself a trip-hop group. When you hear that label, you think about Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, and that one Sneaker Pimps album. Unfortunately, recent years have not produced a wealth of trip-hop so you're probably wondering what a post-Portishead trip-hop group sounds like. On their latest album, "High Noon," The New Law sounds like moody, atmospheric, largely instrumental trip-hop genius.

1. Sundown
2. Seattle Lights
3. Vaya Con Dios
4. Ghost Town Strut
5. Hell's Gates
6. Showdown (Fanu Remix)(feat. Lokeye and Michael Harris)
7. Somebody's Out There
8. An Old Acquaintance
9. The Trail
10. Fiery Sky
11. Time Stands Still
12. Don't Wake Up
13. Say Goodbye
14. Corrupt Shadows
15. Barrels of Bourbon
16. Suicide Doors
17. Cabin Fever
18. As the Waves Crash Against the Rocks
19. Blue Horizon

Based in Seattle, Adam Straney and Justin Neff bring a deep blend of modern electronic sounds to trip-hop. This isn't slow electronica. This isn't acid jazz. This is part drum n bass, part dub, part minimal. This is flavored, this is edgy, and this is the kind of revitalization trip-hop has needed. Adam Straney, also known as Senator Adam, runs a really great podcast called "Nod Your Head" featuring a wealth of glitchy and broken beats that proves there's still life in this kind of music.

The first song really sets the stage for what's to come. "Sundown" begins with dusty, drifting sax and keyboards, with some sampled Wild West sounds thrown in for good measure. It gets a little distortion before the beats come in. Heavy basslines and broken up drums. The vocals are abstract, like the whispers and chorus from a ghost town.

The next track is "Seattle Lights," which comes on strong with a flurry of chopped up beats. The melody from "Sundown" carries over a bit, helping the sense of cohesiveness this album has. The keyboards have an electro sound to them, like neon.

Shortly after that is "Vaya Con Dios." The beat drops and restarts, slower. There's a high hat skipping around faintly in the background. Usually it's the heavy beats that are all broken up, but The New Law doesn't stop there. This is another song that uses the chopped up, echoing sampled vocals that are part of their signature sound.

Winding down even further is "Ghost Town Strut." I don't know if this song really needs any further description. It's a slow, swaggering beat thumping its way around in the dark of undead keys. Definitely one of my favorite tracks on this album, it's also one of the longest. It creeps into your head. I love it's saucy rhythm and it's dirty leather melody.

That fades out into "Hell's Gates." They use a chorus to build a rhythm, and then layer a simple beat over it. The vocals are all chopped up and unintelligible, and you get the impression that the gates of Hell are packed, chaotic, and maybe a little violent. This song is a miasma of head nodding rhythms.

"Showdown" is a bit of a divergence, but no less impressive. If features rap vocals by Lokeye and Michael Harris. The first minute is all whispered vocals and choral samples building the scene for an empty street. The beat comes in and so do the vocals, like sudden gunfire. Rapid and unrelenting they tell of the dangerous world we all live in. The end of this song is interesting in that the vocals keep firing long after the beat is dead and gone.

The New Law does a really nice job of mixing their tracks together. You don't feel like you're listening to an album full of songs. It's more like one long DJ mix. You get that feeling when you sift into "Somebody's Out There." It starts out easy enough, but then some tribal sounding drums come in and some menacing keyboards. It's glitchy and heavy and builds tension.

"An Old Acquaintance" is very mechanical. Everything is chopped up, even the keyboards. It's a little clicky and clacking, like a clock. Great rhythm, maybe a little like "noise," similar to Autechre.

Our old friend winds down and we pick up "The Trail." A lot of static and distortion in the minimal beats. They keyboards weave melodies that spin and curl around one another. You can easily get lost in it and pulls you along.

"Fiery Sky" is another really great track. It sounds like they took hand clapping and manipulated a beat out of it. Then they took some Native American chanting and chopped that up. It creates a bit of chaos at the beginning of this track. Then the drums pick up, littered with hand drums, frantic and on fire. One of my few complaints with High Noon is that most of the tracks are barely above three minutes, but "Fiery Sky" stutters and burns for five.

As that saunters off, "Time Stands Still" comes in. It has a heavy, almost classic trip-hop beat. The saxophone has a western flavor, and the melody is scratchy and grungy. Featured at the beginning of the third "Nod Your Head" podcast, this is a pretty good introduction to The New Law.

There's a one minute freakish diversion called "Don't Wake Up." Like a voice mail from a haunted house in another country, it's a nightmare.

Things turn sunny when "Say Goodbye" comes in. They melody is high, there are some strings, and while the beat is deep it doesn't bring things down. Even the saxophone loses it's ghost town overtones.

They mix into "Corrupt Shadows," which starts out a little ambient, with church bells ringing in the distance and over-processed sampled choral voices. When the beat comes in it's trippy and broken. The vocals are maybe Asian, but they're so manipulated it could be my own grandmother and I'd never know. The keyboards are brilliantly dirty electro. They throw in a rap sample and let it spin. Another one of my favorite tracks on this album, it's over too soon.

"Barrels of Bourbon" is a slow, moody, tension building rhythm with very minimal beats. The saxophone whirls out some character, but the overall sound never goes very fast. "Suicide Doors" is a blazing quick set of beats and rattling samples. Then we catch some "Cabin Fever." This is one of the few songs with clear sampled vocals that are not chopped up or broken. That doesn't mean they aren't unsettling. The beat is pretty slow, and it's broken up and whole portions are amputated. Over that is a thick blanket of clockwork keyboards and weirdness.

"As The Waves Crash Against The Rocks" is slower, more brooding. Almost philosophic, with choral vocals and ambient keyboards. It still has a lot of techie samples and beats, they're just not as fast or as heavy.

Coming in at almost eight minutes, "Blue Horizon" is a wonderful mix of saucy saxophone and familiar trip-hop beats. There's very little of their distortion, glitchiness, or chopped up samples here. It's a pretty straight-forward downtempo track that demonstrates their skills, and is a nice song to end the album with.

Re-reading what I've written about this album, it occurs to me that some of the words I've used could be taken the wrong way. While words like glitchy and chopped, distorted and manipulated may not sound like good things, they really are. "High Noon" demonstrates the right way to chop up a beat, the right way to distort vocals. Check it out and keep your ears open for more.

~ Ethan Georgi

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