Thievery Corporation

After nearly a decade of lounging around, Thievery Corporation’s eternally laidback duo, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, have proven immune to the ups and downs of electronic music. They’ve managed this by focusing on home listening — their first album, after all, was dubbed Songs from the Thievery Hi-Fi — and establishing a consistent sonic aesthetic that incorporates various global genres without seeming exploitive. For their fourth studio effort, the TC tastemakers have expanded their hiring policy, opening up with a Flaming Lips collaboration "Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)” that allows Wayne Coyne to add a psychedelic pop touch to the Corp’s down-tempo beats and trippy sonics. Perry Farrell makes an impressive appearance on the dub-loaded single "Revolution Solution” and even David Byrne drops his inimitable vocals atop a jazzy Afro beat cut. Elsewhere on the album we find welcome TC regulars like Sleepy Wonder (the Jamaican toaster who voiced "Richest Man in Babylon”), French singer LouLou and Indian vocalist Gunjan. Though the Corp's essential sonic blueprint remains in place — sitars, tablas, Latin percussion, dancehall, dub, etc — they pull off this global lounge fusion better than anyone out there and while the music remains relaxing, the increasingly leftist lyrics offer counterpoint to everything else going down in their DC hometown.