Music Re-View 8

All Images: March 2020

This is not a review of the album, which is awesome, or the pressing, which is cool. It is for the fact that/ it’s filled with glitchy sound effects/ early-Croydon dubstep/ and more than a little bit of chaos/ it is hard to imagine this album topping year-end lists or floating up near the top of/ a regular Amazon box/ lush and contemplative, if not quite futuristic anymore, it opens up a whole world of memory/ and came to me bent/ the results make it seem like the machines, excited at finally being awakened from their slumber, are excitedly/ getting wired and jabbering at each other all night long/ just last week I was asking in another context just how much of an exercise in nostalgia we should be prepared to countenance.

This music makes me feel infinitely smarter/ speedy, squiggly, squirrelly/ and infinitely stupid at the same time/ at this point my cranium could literally explode/ in a skittering, scattergun mish-mash of bubbling bleep-bloop tones, burbling breakbeats, twitchy textures and circuitous, chaotic cross-talk/ the jizz-fonk is still present and correct, but the junglist breaks and acid are also back in a big way/ there’s also a sequence of very authentic squelches/ like a madly profuse coral or insect colony/ it makes for a nice/interface session on the confluence simulator.

He’s found a rather touching musical language to articulate/ a million open invitations/ that can only be processed through movement/ - a crazy labyrinth of adventure, of never-ending death and rebirth/ he’s spent his long, lauded career/ munching on magic coins and fruit, and solving elaborate puzzles in a brightly lit, surreal landscape/ the potential for lifelong nerve damage/ imbues the LP with a jam-band quality that both makes and breaks it/ he doesn’t need the jazz inflections to stand out from the crowd - he does so naturally/ and where gaming is engaged with, it’s usually in some reactionary, disapproving way/ yesterday I listened to it in full, then listened to it again, and then/ he broke his wrist falling on ice.

If you buy one album this year, make it this one/ just get moving/ it’s a love letter to his fans, and perhaps/ some of the most stunningly intricate beatwork you’d get away with/ while piloting your hovercar/ instead of being repulsed by the seeming nonsense of it all, I’m left giggling at its willing absurdity/ you might find that this album scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had/ yet it’s hard top shake the feeling that it’s higher now than it’s been in years/ do whatever your devices tell you/ dance, run around, jump up and down/ while still being a head bobber/ lost futures abound/ CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER/ that’s probably for the best.