Label: Warp Format: 12″,CDS
A curiously accessible mire of vocal samples splutter and waft from and electronic soup from almost the first moment of “Windowlicker”, before Richard James applies some customarily deep-fried production to what could otherwise have been a languorous bass and kickdrum smoocher. Instead, linearity gets a darned good rogering, the various melodic lines pulped, smeared and bloated at the still-strange knobs and faders of one of the better twiddlers around. All this and a gorgeous, swelling slab of broncheous overdriven fuzz rising from nowhere into a self-swallowing finish.
There’s a track with what appears to be a mathematical formula for a title next, and it’s an opportunity for the A-Twin to match sounds to letters and symbols as far as can be determined; Drum & Bass doesn’t really come close to describing the swirl of deracinated sounds glooping and floundering around each other like so much minced magnetic tape in a cut and paste explosion in a (Musique) Concrète mixer. “Nannou” plucks a typically disarming melody from a mess of watch ticks, comb scratches and music boxes, providing a delicate finish to another one of those sideways Aphex singles he does so well.
– Freq1C-
