Smack my jazz up

Channel: a jazz-influenced electronica band with buzzing guitars.

If only the major labels were remotely successful at bringing electronica to the mainstream back in 1997, people would have Boom Boom Satellites blasting out of their car stereos right about now.

Eh, but what do major labels know? They try to shove Prodigy and Chemical Brothers down our throats, and we — or rather some of our kids — shove them back with the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys.

Boom Boom Satellites write and perform the kind of electronica major labels wanted — thundering beats and twittering effects with enough guitars thrown in the mix.

On “Push Eject,” a growling Kawashima Michiyuki gives way to a guitar solo set over a collage of feedback pings, buzzing chords and tiny, repeated motifs that sound collectively disjointed.

It’s a beautiful mess of sound.

On “Limbo,” BBS sound like the Crystal Method, with a robotically processed vocal that intones, “I’m living in limbo/No man’s land.”

But once the Tokyo-based duo start layering double-time and half-time drum beats over each other, any resemblance to the Method pretty much fly out the window.

Hints of jazz also pop up through the Satellite’s music. “Intruder” is pretty much a programmed jazz drum solo. “An Owl” superimposes frenetic saxophone and muted trumpet solos over a frantic drum ‘n’ bass beat. “Batter the Jam No. 3” sports a psychelic flute solo that’s missing a Claude Bolling piano accompaniment.

Boom Boom Satellites is a band near the far end of the pop music spectrum. This kind of smart sonic collage creation is destined never to hit mainstream radio waves, but Out Loud does set a standard by which other bands aiming to do the same kind of musical food-processor-ing will be judged.