Armand Van Helden is a master at re-working a break and maximising the dance-floor impact of a bass line. Tracks such as 'You Don't Know Me' and 'Flowerz', along with re-mixes such as 'Professional Widow', have made him a 'house'-hold name.
Recently he's been inviting controversy by knocking his fellow US house artists for failing to say anything and getting stuck in a rut. His response, in this album, is to use influences and samples that would normally be anathema to house music.
Kicking in with a moody hip hop intro on the title track, Killing Puritans leaps through a whirlwind tour of genres. Breakdancer's Call flirts with drum 'n' bass, electro and leftfield jazz breaks. Full Moon is a seriously old skool funky hip hop groove, while Watch Your Back features former Brand New Heavies singer N'Dea Davenport and settles into a tough and funky groove. Hybridz is pure Jungle Brothers hip house, even down to "house your body" hooks. 'Flyaway Love' is a filtered disco offering, while 'Swamp Thing' nods in the direction of Afro beat.
In drawing on rock, hip hop, electro, drum 'n' bass and early electronic artists, Van Helden mirrors the developments dance acts have been making in the UK and Europe, rather than US artists. Little Black Spiders manages to out do big beat, or rather what it became, at its own game. Rather than adding guitars to dance music, the track simply rocks in a straight-forward, head banging mosh of a metal tune.
Again the references are European and Spiders uses a sample from Hanover's The Scorpions, a band that in its heyday was big with long haired, leather clad types everywhere and simply colossal in Japan. Apart from anything else this is a stroke of marketing genius.
The final skill on this album is the incidental inserts between tracks that range from minimal statements to self mocking conversations and direct political references.
Whether Killing Puritans manages to be as boundary busting as Van Helden intends is questionable.
It certainly isn't unheard of for US house DJs to play rock music (Ron Hardy and Larry Levan were both famous for chucking Led Zeppelin or anything else that worked into the mix) and it's not unusual for house acts to produce hip hop music.
But Van Helden has challenged the parameters of house music and produced that still rare thing - a dance album that works at home.
