Think DJs only focus on the right scratches, the best beats, or the perfectly synced speeds at which turntablists switch from one platter to another?

Here's some food for thought: U.K. techno artists DJ Food actually have real musical tastes. In the case of Strictly Kev (aka Kevin Foakes), one-half the band-leading force behind Food, that palette absorbs a fair share of electronica, blues and even jazz.

"I really didn't have a clue where to start with jazz," Foakes says with a laugh. "When I visited Canada in 1996, I found myself in all these amazing record shops. Records are much cheaper to buy in Canada compared to Britain, so I could afford to pick up fusiony stuff like early '70s Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, etc."

As one of the premiere DJ acts to arise from U.K. specialty label Ninja Tune, also home to Brit mates Coldcut and Montreal wiz Kid Koala, DJ Food strays from the conventional, and often mind-numbing, beats and scratches. Instead, Foakes says, DJ Food offers up a smorgasbord, if you will, of sounds guaranteed to stimulate the mind.

"We play with sounds so much that we don't want to sound like dance music, meaning too automated," says Foakes, who'll man the platters for DJ Food's Babylon show Wednesday night with Ninja Tune pals Dynamic Syncopation and Fink. "We wanted something more organic and to make the computer invisible -- not completely, but enough to produce nice effects."

Change in direction

Four years in the making, DJ Food's latest conceptual effort, 1999's Kaleidoscope, shows Foakes and partner-in-crime Patrick "PC" Carpenter (along with assorted collaborators) guiding a change in direction since the outfit formed 11 years ago. Foakes joined full-time in the mid-1990s, when DJ Food had been Coldcut cohorts Matt Black and Jonathan More's baby for five years. No stranger to Coldcut's work, Foakes had DJ'ed with the pair on numerous U.K. club gigs and their weekly radio show.

After a series of Jazz Brakes albums, Black and More wanted to solely concentrate on Coldcut, allowing Foakes and Carpenter to grab the DJ Food reins prior to '95's Recipe For Disaster.

A textured mix of atmospheric jazz loops, dense rhythms and spoken-word passages, Kaleidoscope sounds as if it could've been conjured up with live players.

Not bad for two lads with skilled turntable and computer expertise working in their favour. "Computers are amazing. There's no way that album could've been made without them. Not by us, anyway, especially since I can't read or write music like that," Foakes says.