4 out of 5

Label: Rephlex

Produced by: F. D’Arcangelo, M. D’Arcangelo (composed by)

Wow – ouch.

While I’ve been a fan of D’Arcangelo for a while, I jumped on with Shipwreck as my first “hey, this is on the same label as Aphex Twin stuff” purchase back in the early 00s. Since then I’ve experienced a lot of the D’Arcangelo brothers’ icy IDM, which vacillates along the grooving and glitching axes of electro, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard their work be as brutal as on the A-side of this first EP. It’s almost hard to identify as their work – certainly without the name on the tin, I’d never have called it – until you get to the B-side, and the gliding synths atop those clipped beats are absolutely their style, especially synced with their aforementioned debut full-length.

Rewinding to the harsher stuff, though, this is definitely of the Ventolin variety of IDM, breaking sounds across a digital spectrum, truly just stuttering, piercing tones, catching me off guard once the tracks play, and furthering surprising me when Ro-Hn goes almost full noise with its core loop. But like Ventolin, and despite my description, this stuff is also miraculously musical, and once you set the shock aside, I think you can hear the way the brothers tend to match disparate moods together for something generally smooth, this just being a more extreme example of the juxtaposition.

‘Somewhere in Time’ is quite a banger – perhaps more AFX than Ventolin – but Ro-Hn and Scrakt are certainly of the school of the latter.

Once we flip to the Diagram tracks on the B-side, XI is light and playful; a joyous, cute reply (Boy/Girl-esque, if you want another Aphex reference.). VII then finally sounds like “classic” D’Arcangelo, and I suppose I’d only wish that the “Milk Mx” of this track was more distinct from the “80’s Mx”. They are distinct, but it’s a weird half-step where the songs are principally the same, just with a different top layer (to super over simplify), making it not quite a remix, but not quite a new song, either.

Nonetheless, quite a kickass debut, and still affecting 20+ years later.