[12.02] For a musical form that's almost limitless by definition, sample-based electronica breaks the bonds of looping cliché and convention with baffling infrequency. Twenty-plus years after the hip-hop revolution and nearly 10 since the sounds of Bristol and DJ Shadow shook up the instrumental side of the equation, the number of real arrangers and composers to bust into electronica's mainstream remains few. And the genre's recorded legacy remains populated by records long on choice tones and breaks, but short on soul and vision.

About the only frustration about Los Ultimos Dias del AM from Radio Zumbido, is how close it comes to breaking completely free of those stylistic shackles. What's satisfying in the end, is how well this record swings in spite of them. Los Ultimos Dias may fall prey to the four-beat loop trap too often to be any real break from dance/electronica convention, but it's an immersive and moving listen. And while it may not stretch as widely or breathe as deeply as it could, it cracks with exuberance, enthusiasm and electricity.

Juan Carlos Barrios, who helms the Radio Zumbido project, is an inspired texturalist. The most notable and effective samples on Los Ultimos Dias—moody, minor-key horn lines, faint choral vocals and barking Latin DJs bounce and dart like broadcasts colliding across a twilight desert. And Barrios' own instrumental flourishes—largely keyboards and percussion—are thoughtful and effective additions to the party. It's only as a beatmaster that Barrios handcuffs himself and, at times, the tunes. But even amid lapses into repetition there's a lot to hang on to.

"Livingston Buzz" quotes Santana's driving Jingo rhythm before hanging mysterious slide tones, satellite beeps, wistful horn lines, and raspy organ on the tree. "Aparicion" takes advantage of Barrios' lazy loops to become a cheerily borracho neo-dub track. And on "Caracol," Barrios adorns a slick drum n' bass beat with a sorrowful eastern flute passage to lend an eerie emotional weight.

With so many electronica artists mining the well of ethnic music to dress their beats, it's hard to know how effectively Los Ultimas Dias del AM will distinguish itself from the pack over the long haul. But regardless of whether or not these are the last days of the lazy, pillaging four-beat loop artist, Radio Zumbido's latest remains a beautiful, if minor, deviation from the norm. —Charles Saufleyž