Crash and Burn!

Eat Static resides in that stylistic wormhole where acid jazz, strong penchants for sci-fi, and straight-up techno hope to still seamlessly coexist. But here in the new millennium, this U.K. trio rarely deploys these threadbare elements in a particularly fresh way. Their samples and their Doctor Who aesthetic mostly come across as tired and unimaginative. Tracks like "Holy War" and "The Curious Dr. Hump" manage to momentarily keep interest afloat, but the days of Latin-infused ("Love Truncheon") and lounge-oriented techno ("Mondo A Go-Go!") are passed unless they're redelivered with new inspiration. "Nocturnal Umbra" is probably their best effort here, but it too suffers from an imprint long ago minted, disbursed, and abandoned by other hands (in this case, the Orb's Alex Patterson).