We - Square Root of Minus One (CD)

All Music Guide

Who says there's no good American drum and bass? We (a trio consisting of the eminent DJs Once 11, Olive and Loop) have changed all that. Now even the snobbiest hardcore, hardstep Anglocentric junglists have no excuse but to give the American drum scene its due: just about everything on We's second album gives the best of the U.K. crew a run for their money. Granted, Square Root of Minus One starts out weak, with the shapeless, beatless and tuneless drone of "Birimbau," but things pick up immediately with the frenetic breakbeats and kid vocal samples of "Diablos" and they basically never let up. Thrill to the slow and smoky "Caya's Kids," with its dubwise effects, to the cool ethnic percussion and backward bass on "You Gone?," and to the eerie electric piano and reggae-fied beat of "Hielo." Marvel almost as much to most everything else, too. Excellent.

- Rick Anderson, All Music Guide