(Cubano, Tech House, Minimal) Maayan Nidam - Nightlong - 2009, MP3 (tracks), 320 kbps

Not all repetitions are equal: Good repetitions, as beautiful loops teach, contain both their own perpetuation and a constant motion toward something else—there's something different inside each beat, even just in relation to all its "identical" others. A recent interview here on RA with Matt "Mr. Slave" Edwards captures something of this. He's right—Larry Levan played really, really, really repetitive music, but played it so long, so well, played it until something magic happened. Likewise Villalobos.

But this approach isn't for everyone. More: it's something incredibly difficult, fraught and elusive, 'cos loops lock, loops lump—and loops like these are dull. Maayan Nidam proves here that she, like Levan and Villalobos, knows how to sort the dead loops from the living: (the whole) Night Long is time enough to dwell with her jazz-finding loop records and realise that this lady knows a living loop when she cuts one.

Technically we're back in the land of DJ Premier: take a nicely mic-ed up bar or four of jazz—drums, double bass, some piano—loop, assemble, mix, stir. Structurally, these classic techniques breathe in a house structure, and given Nidam's style, we're closer to the Ricardo Villalobos of Sei es Drum than '90s hip-hop. But Nidam has a touch and feel all her own—where RV sounds are orbed, warped, and monged until they're returned repressed (we know that kick drums that have spent lots of time in RV's machines are never quite the same afterwards), Nidam's compositions have a sober, composed, calming comfort to them. RV is having tea with Borges in the harem of Archimedes… here you're just in Nidam's kitchen, and the tea has no spikes.

This is eminently likeable, personable work: the recordings of Cuban musicians undertaken by PowerShovelAudio's reps are beautiful, and Nidam has transformed them into something all her own, something incredibly useful (as DJ tools) that also make a real close listening treat. Dig in, I say: play, repeat.