3 out of 5

Label: Rephlex

Producer: Richard D. James

Man, tough call.  I hated this collection on my first listen – it takes the house cues from the previous AB, but perhaps released from having to produce an album for a label not his own (the first AB was on TVT Records), there’s not as much focus on tailoring the tracks into songs, and so we get some indulgence with tracks that linger for too long, or stick with their harsh noise too repetitively, not deepening it as the first AB did pretty well (within the confines of being a pretty beat-based album).  But those indulgences are also indicative of the experimentation that would start to work into James’s catalogue, getting further away from the house scene in which I suppose he was born and making his own brand of noise.  Indeed, the more rave-up thumps are gone on a lot of these tracks, in favor of odd noises or distortions that are used as the basis for the song.  Track titles are tossed away in favor of strings of digits, and we even get an interestingly creepy – but short – ambient track toward the end.

It’s almost offensive as background music, in a way, because its just harsh enough to stay present in your ear, but not varied enough to make you check what track is playing.  It seems long when you’re not actually listening to it, in which case the puzzle of it starts to unravel a bit, and you can hear the ebb and flow in the songs… and, frustratingly, these minor variations start to make some tracks really stand out as impressive manipulations of noise.  Though it does end with what sounds like someone taking a piss, which thus tosses a “Richard’s just taking the piss” wink onto the conclusion of the record… I mean, I have no idea, and I probably never will.

Serves as a good bridge between two styles – house and experimental – but don’t expect to bob your head to this or to dig it right away.