SPRING HEEL JACK”68 Million Shades . ....

SPRING HEEL JACK

“68 Million Shades . . . “

Island Independent

** 1/2

This British duo emerges from the U.K. with a major-label album that straddles experimental electronica and the hyper-speed hip-hop of drum-and-bass--a style somewhere between Aphex Twin and abstract junglist Photek.

“68 Million” is an incongruent collection of loops, plastic melodies and manic beats that leaves the listener wondering, “Where’s the beef?” Intriguing concepts are rushed onto aural canvases like synthetic sound bites that never develop into stories. If this album were applying for work in your listening room, it might appear too desperate to get the job.

The label’s widely accepted campaign spin is that Spring Heel Jack (which plays the Troubador on March 8) is the outsider of drum-and-bass ’97. But this is the duo that helped remix and remake pop stars Everything But the Girl into the Kenny G of dance music--heralding an age of jungle “lite” (with no end of drum-and-bass remixes of the Fugees, Sade, Soul II Soul, etc.).

“68 Million” certainly remakes Spring Heel into a laudable experimentalist--the ideas are there. Perhaps more time and thought will put the group in step with drum-and-bass masters such as Photek, LTJ Bukem, Omni Trio, Neotropic, Ben Neill--insider artists who can paint representational works as well as abstracts, landscapes as well as details.