3 out of 5

Label: Planet Mu

Produced by: Bogdan Raczynski

I think the sensible, mature listener in me should be more receptive of Bogdan Raczynski’s Addle, the artist’s first full album since the 15-years-previous Alright! During Bogdan’s more active era of the late 90s / 00s – though, album aside, he has been back over the past few years, dropping EPs and digital releases – he had already shown shifts from his earliest splatterpunk style of electro anarchy; it follows that we’d expect further changes from the time off until now, and Addle-contemporary reviews and interviews I’m reading speak to that inevitable change, and the album’s / Raczynski’s response to the noisy, bravado of the modern day… as well as his own legacy.

The latter ends up being the overwhelming feeling here: that Addle is almost a strict avoidance of what came before. Apparently noodled on for years, I can imagine the artist pushing against ingrained habit or recognizable sounds as much as possible, allowing only the briefest glimmer of BPM funkiness on the 2 LPs C-side, followed up by a groovy chill-out track, before the D-side returns to Addle’s median: calming rhythmic tones and steady beats – like Cylob’s Mood Bells with a boppable bassline.. It’s not wholly unrecognizable by any means, as I think the production is absolutely gorgeous throughout; tracks are also confident in their construction, and the kind of looping structure – the near entirety of the A- and B-sides share (to my ear) some basic melodies and tonal range – feels in line with Bogdan’s general playfulness, especially with the control over the percussion that sneaks in throughout.

But…

But…

The more impulsive listener in me is admittedly most excited by that C-side track. I’m all for progress; Raczynski had attempted to meld his cut-and-paste IDM to more emotional tracks in the Rephlex era, and it was interesting but incomplete. You can hear a more grown-up take on that within Addle, however, the tamping down of anything too expressive renders it pretty snoozy. So while I can hunt for Bogdan-esque elements, in truth, if I heard this without context, it might not grab my full attention. It’s so, so pleasant, and I’ll credit it with being perfect background music, just varying and lively enough to tap your toe, but surely not distracting. The title is pretty funny in that regard, as the tracks names are all rearranged variants of the word (e.g. Ladde, Eadld), which is a common enough electro shtick but also drives home the dissection of our expectations of what a Bogdan Raczynski album sounds like.

My hope here is that this is the warm-up; Raczynski building his confidence in establishing a modern sound, and a sooner followup album will iterate on this, emerging with something equally as confident, but also more identifiable.