Similar in surface design to another instrumental-only release this month, which was Bumps’ breaks driven self-titled album, Seiji’s DJ Tools seems to operate purely in the premise dictated by its title. Unlike Bumps’ effort though, which was alarmingly minimalistic, Seiji serves up 21 cuts with tempo and genre shifts that touch hip hop through to breakbeat through to house, and a mood that could not be called anything but deliriously upbeat.

As a member of those inimitable dubstep terrorists Bugz In The Attic, Seiji definitely has the pedigree to rock booties and the Bugz incendiary DJ sets are constructed mostly from scraps of digital wamp and analogue bwap welded together with gritty, slippery static and on DJ Tools you definitely get the Bugz vibe. Throughout most of the album however, Seiji veers off onto so many musical paths you can’t help but be fascinated beyond the normal point of call associated with breaks albums, and his deviations are intelligent and earnest. DJ Tools works as a home listening album because it has personality and as Jules our man in Inglewood says, “personality goes a long way”.

The lush analogue stutter that creeps through opener Sweat Band gives way thirty seconds in to an electro stomp that Afrika Bambaata would be proud of and the following Velour tweaks Headman-style disco for the grimestep generation. The wonderfully nostalgic Bat Eyed blasts mournful air raid sirens (a sound in modern electronica all the more melancholy now that its main protagonist J Dilla has sadly passed) through a lazy summer 909 groove but on Dribbler, the raw kit and happy hardcore bassline venture into darker, grittier Death In Vegas territory.

There are incredible similarities between Bugz and London’s other dubstep wonder boys Switch, who produced M.I.A.’s new record. One wonders if Seiji picked some Bhangra breaks tips of them because the storming Funny That sounds like the kind of twisted, mango-pickled funk Ms Arulpragasm thrives on. Album highlight Come On Everybody sweats a sea of druggy bleeps and bumpy, low slung digi bass while gun shot beats target an Atari voice bellowing monotone through the maelstrom.

Things get pretty weird from there on in. We Can Still Have A Party locks acid and hoover rave in a closet together, Charging is obtuse, heavy yet serpentine and the aptly titled Grimewave is 2 step defiled and disgraced by Aphex Twin. It all comes to a heady, twisted end, much like a Bugz set where tempos, syncopation, genres and sub woofers are all tested to breaking point. But the soothing, minimal hip hop of closing track Lame reels you back from the brink with whale whooping sonar synths and a hip hop swagger that trips up on its bootlaces.

This is a breaks album with remarkable depth and intelligence in spite of its simplistic title, as if Seiji thought himself incapable of making an album of sublimely listenable breakbeat beyond the dancefloor. As it stands, DJ Tools is a great little album of future funk that you could (and that’s a tentative ‘could’) sit under the oh-so-hip umbrella of grime/dubstep even though anything tainted by the Bugz is impervious to categorization. Seiji has created a golden nugget here for DJs and producers alike but his musical adventurism means that even the most non linear electronica lover will get something out of this. Recommended.