Released by the U.K.'s Immigrant label,
The Toiling of Idle Hands is another enjoyable -- if not spectacular -- album from
John Tejada. As a follow-up to his previous solo LP,
Daydreams in Cold Weather, it carries in the producer's tradition of blending numerous substrains of dance music into one uniquely coalesced whole. He keeps it warm and upbeat from start to finish. The lack of tempo variation, along with a couple of structural similarities (there's a 30-second difference between the shortest and longest tracks, for instance), throws a wrench into its ability to be effective as a home-listening album, but no single track is weak. The two outside factors that truly work against this album?
Tejada releases so much material that it all can be overwhelming to even begin to tackle, and there's really no one place where he fits in. Don't hold these factors against him, especially when several of the tracks here stand up with some of his best work.