[Kompakt]

Out of practically every contemporary dance music producer I can think of, Matias Aguayo appears to be wringing his hands the least over his genre’s digital future. His BumBumBox mini-events in major South American metropolises — wherein a few daisychained boom boxes, an iPod full of DJ mixes, and a random urban location stand in for a Funktion One, a vinyl-wielding selector in an expensive t-shirt, and a dance floor — take the most terrifying possible outcome of the mp3’s rise to dominance and spin a nifty little party out of the formula. His excellent Cómeme label, home to some of the strangest and crunchiest house nuggets of the year, was never even intended to make it beyond a MySpace page. And he recorded his Resident Advisor mix, one of my favorite entries in the venerable series this year, on his computer while in transit. Producers and DJs have spent the latter portion of this decade burrowing into classicism, a fine security blanket for when techno’s hi-tech future finally arrives and feels cooler to the touch than many enthusiasts imagined. Regardless of your stance on the megabytes now driving our parties and singles, you’ve got to respect an industry veteran giving his blessing to the automated, compressed direction we may be ceaselessly barreling towards.

Ay Ay Ay, Aguayo’s latest full-length, ramps this casualness towards the death of elaborate recording studios and proper discotheques up a notch. Aside from muted drums and rolling bass lines, Aguayo’s only instrument is his own FXed-to-smithereens voice. He’s lent his vocals to techno recordings before, most notably on Closer Musik cuts like “One, Two, Three — No Gravity” and a handful of Cómeme singles, and he’s known for drenching his DJ sets in mic breaks not far removed from what’s found herein. But Ay Ay Ay takes its maker’s mouth to theatrical, psychedelic new extremes — maybe three parts Dave Aju, one part Animal Collective. I can’t think of another record quite like it on a major dance music label this year. But unfortunately, its singularity is overshadowed by being something of a mixed bag.

Muddled and dense yet surprisingly even-toned, Ay Ay Ay‘s textures plant its grooves far outside the boundaries of the dance floor. Would-be anthems like opener “Menta Latte,” “Rollerskate,” and the title cut don’t want for head-bobbing catchiness, but they lack the acuity necessary to move any dance floor bigger than your bedroom. Calling out these tracks for a lack of big-room pleasures is, of course, likely unfair: any unimpeded space is a nightclub, Aguayo’s thesis seems to go, and any human with gall, a working voicebox, and a primer in techno composition can produce a track. Obviously well-fed over the years on techno, Aguayo puts this to the test better than most could. On “Ritmo Juarez,” an album highlight with a somber mood befitting the murderous Mexican city its title might reference, he strikes a near-perfect balance between half-time and speedy melodies atop the track’s jittery core rhythm. His soaring falsetto on the track, which Aguayo also works into the near-Balearic “Koro Koro,” makes for one of Ay Ay Ay‘s prettiest and most sublime moments. Such moments of clarity in this onomatopoeia-pop, however, are few and far between. Aguayo is no Aju: excellent beat-boxing aside, these mouth-sounds play like sketches of sounds rather than fully-formed ones, noises you might scat to yourself in the shower before toweling off and sprinting to your actual gear. (A man as dedicated to the nomadic DJ lifestyle as Aguayo probably made much of this music shuttling between continents, but these days, that’s just not a valid excuse for half-formed production ideas.) On “Ay Shit — The Master” and “Me Vuelvo Loca” late in the album, Aguayo’s arrangements risk blowing out his ghettoblasters with tones too thick, too mid-rangey, and maybe a little too ugly to pass. And across Ay Ay Ay, Aguayo succumbs to songwriting so simplistic and boring that no amount of vocal flourish can properly flesh it out.

But I can’t completely advise against his formula on this record, because on “Ritmo Tres” Aguayo gets it exactly right. Featuring punchier bass, a punkier chorus, and a more streamlined arrangement than its brethren, the track could actually do some damage at the sort of party you’d pay money to get into. Most importantly, and unlike just about every other track in this collection, “Ritmo Tres” stands up to the material he and associates like DJs Pareja and Rebolledo have produced for Cómeme. That imprint, replete with raunchy street sounds and punishing riddims plucked from well outside techno, has been responsible for some of the finest booty music in recent memory. Aguayo, like many of us, longs for new and unfamiliar contexts for music that makes you move. But I can’t help but feel like Aguayo has limited himself too much here. Cómeme tracks might rock your neighborhood BumBumBox, but I’ve heard them slay clubs as well. Ay Ay Ay desperately wants me to shake, but I’m just not sure where.