4 out of 5

Label: Disciples

Produced by: 8Ball (?)

We got older; we got a little slower, a little more predictable.

When you go back and listen to the classic Bogdan Raczynski albums, they still sound just… wild. They’re really raw and unleashed, and mix glitch and D&B and moments of weirdo pop in a seamless blitz of energetic electro. When Bogdan pushed his music out of that zone, it maybe didn’t quite hit that same sweet spot, but that experimentation was part of the fun, and the excitement of what the next album would bring.

A billion million kids grew up with or discovered that music, and alongside the general Rephlex influence, have brought a lot more Bogdan-y tunes into the world, but that doesn’t diminish how fresh the originals still sound.

Bogdan went away for quite a while, and returned at the tail end of the 00s, starting to release steadily once more. The scene has been evolving this whole time, of course, and Raczynski has, duh, gotten older, and I feel you can hear an equation of those inputs outputted as electro that’s quality, but finding its way between What Was and What Is, and settling on something that’s, I dunno, a little less special feeling than the stuff I’m describing above. And now we have a remix album – Bogdan’s Rephlex output handed over to 8Ball for chopping and screwing, and turned into a mostly slick club mix.

8Ball, compared to Bodan, is a relative new kid on the block, and so the whole framing here feels made to highlight how your average Raczynski listener is maybe probably picking up this stuff with some nostalgia stuffed in their ears, and their ears are a little more sensitive than they used to be, and so a pretty chill mixtape with some callbacks to stuff they recognize is a win.

I know I am sounding way to offhand here, and using my own framing to make gigantic, totally unfounded assumptions about Bogdan’s fanbase, which also doesn’t address those discovering his latter-era work first, but I’m trying to own up to what’s affecting my rating. Also, note that my rating is pretty good.

…But I come to that with caveats due to all of this blabber, as I’m not too keen on Raczynski’s modern output, and this remix album is a cheeky reminder of that. To be clear: it’s an excellent remix job; 8Ball did the tough task of turning Bogdan’s works into something streamlined and straight-up head-bobbing danceable, but did so without sacrificing the Rephlex herky-jerk. There is an ongoing beat, and 8Ball very choicefully morphs that into breakbeat freakouts at key points (on cassette, it’s about the midway point of each side of the cassette), before chilling us out and cycling through some memorable samples. It’s mostly stitched together excellently, with some occasional dead moments and standard DJ mash-up edits that, unfortunately, ruin the spell a bit.

With that clarity about the quality, though, is accepting that the set kind of makes the music sound… old. Set to a more familiar template, this blazingly original works are very purposefully painted with a retro-esque vibe that one’s aforementioned nostalgia-ears cling to. It’s an interesting experience, and kind of helped to contextualize my feelings towards this era of Bogdan, allowing me to be okay with liking what came before separately; “We Used To Corrupt Each Other With Art & Coffee” is thus a fitting tribute, a smart and patient remix, and a nice way for me to part ways with an artist.