Anti​-​Theft Device

The Beastie Boys introduced DJ Mix Master Mike into the fold for Hello Nasty in 1998, and while Invisibl Skratch Piklz fans already knew the score, his showcase “Three MC’s and One DJ” — complete with an intro where Mike demonstrates a wah-wah-pedal-driven, pitch-bending “tweak scratch” via voicemail — absolutely exploded the numbers of his potential fanbase. Good thing Anti-Theft Device came out a week after Hello Nasty — the main course after the appetizer, it’s both overstuffed with beat-juggling, channel-surfing ideas and quick to move on from them before they wear out their welcome. Sometimes all he needs is a powerful speaker-rattler of a beat and a few lightly manipulated clips from sci-fi flicks or hardcore hip-hop shout-outs to get his point across — “Ill Shit,” “Sloh Beat,” and the Portishead-fricassee “Deeportashun” sound damn near minimalist compared to the record’s more frantic moments. But his technique shines throughout: there’s a gripping sense of disorientation to the way the title cut builds a new percussive world from a few familiar bars of John Bonham and a brain-scrambling omnidirectional fusillade of micro-cut sound fragments, while the pacing-in-a-cage bass groove of “Supa Wyde Laces” and the Preemo/DITC-style soul-jazz chops on “Gang Tackle” give him a lot of space to unfurl his flashier tendencies while still offering a fundamental sense of what makes a hip-hop instrumental headnod-worthy. And it’s a jolt when one of his direct-drive-demolishing turns of the wrist sneaks up on you to wrestle something not just virtuosic but truly bizarre from the vinyl. “Jack Knyfe” starts out seething with reverb-heavy Tangerine Dream-esque synth-dread and only gets wilder when he starts scratching out what sounds like early ’80s arcade game laser-blast SFX. And “Suprize Packidge” conjures up a crossfader symphony of Taking of Pelham One Two Three grittiness that it subverts with some emphatically squishy distortions of ’70s funk on the ones and twos.