Travis Stewart‘s third and best album as Machine Drum proves why IDM-centric hip-hop heads adore him. Without coming off as a biter, he melds the best traits of Boards Of Canada, Push Button Objects, Autechre, and Dabrye into tracks of elegant complexity and Ph(LS)D-level beat programming. Bidnezz displays Stewart‘s virtuosic use of DSP, scrambling hip-hop‘s DNA and sprinkling equal doses of glamour and grit into its rhythm matrices. Some hip-hop producers‘ tracks are simply too bizarre and disorienting to spit over–such is the case with Machine Drum‘s alien-funk creations. Long may he warp hip-hop‘s templates.