Even during the genre's mid-'90s heyday, it was clear that Mike Paradinas' vision of IDM had as much interest in the D as the I. His music was frequently cutting edge while still being unabashedly melodic, groove driven, and occasionally tongue in cheek, offering a cheerful shrug and a hearty pat on the shoulder where others doled out a shove or a smack to the head. Albums like 1997's revelatory Lunatic Harness and 1999's underrated Royal Astronomy radiated the sense that the producer's sounds were less built to shake foundations and more purposed to just sound fun. Of course, in Paradinas' case, fun meant post-jungle rhythms that constantly threatened to break apart or bass hits that would have sounded janky coming from a Colecovision. Controlled chaos was Mu-Ziq's specialty.
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