Jason Forrest

It might be pieced together with a laptop and a sequencer, but Jason Forrest's music is as rock 'n' roll as power chords and drum solos. Across the 40 manic minutes of the aptly titled Shamelessly Exciting, you'll hear microfine, cut-n-pasted shards of Bad Brains, Steely Dan, the Ramones, Gerry Rafferty, Blondie and more, deconstructed and rebuilt into a spastic electro-punk homage to all things rawk. Forrest's talent lies not in just enthusiastic namechecking but in real composition -- these are full-blown songs, not just garbled mashups. Listen close and hold on.