Montreal-based producer
Ghislain Poirier's music has been given the cutesy subgenre name "glitch-hop" by some, and vaguely irritating though that neologism is, it sort of fits. Imagine if
Lil Jon got ahold of a bunch of
Mouse on Mars and
Oval records and you're more than halfway to the thudding, minimalist beats and cut-up electronic jingles that are the basis of
Breakupdown. The instrumentals occasionally venture into the overstuffed mix'n'match aesthetic of
DJ Shadow or
Cut Chemist (one key exception being the spare, chilling "Close the News"), and linking interludes like "Té Wack" (a babbling freestyle in Quebecois French delivered in a goofily inappropriate gangsta rhythm) are fun but slight. But the meat of
Breakupdown is in solid underground hip-hop tracks like "Cold as Hell" and "Nowhere to Run." For good measure, there's a pair of dancehall riddims featuring toasting by
DJ Collage, one in English and another (the terrific "Riviere de Diamants") in French. There are so many different influences in
Breakupdown that it occasionally threatens to fall apart; the fact that it never quite does is testament to
Poirier's canny intelligence.