5 out of 5

Label: Rephlex

Produced By: Chris Jeffs

Chris Jeffs, one of the original Rephlexers and owner of a similarly scattered amount of nom de plumes as Richard James, covers an equally wide range of styles.  Though – if I may commit a sin at the holy alter of James – I find some of his work to be more committed to a particular style, which can be a plus or minus depending on your critical point of view.

With Kinesthesia – mostly a work of minimalism – I consider it a great plus, his dedicated focus on tracks like Plasmoid, a stripped down jungle beat (supposing such a thing exists…) that subsists at a solid state for a good five minutes before allowing for the most subtle of flourishes.  And yet the exact balance of rhythm remains compelling, such that you’re almost disappointed when it breaks from that trance, if not for the impact that long wait creates.  Consider it, in this sense, a counterpoint to James’ jingle Didgeridoo workout, which made waves with its bpm exhaustion; Jeffs inverts the formula, and makes something just as impressive.

The whole album works up to this point, in a sense, and steps through a lot of hoops other artists have tripped on.  Opener Spode starts us off in more familiar beat-oriented ambient textures before Dyal Nein ups the minimalism with the kind of slippery sonic textures I had hoped the entire Dreamscape soundtrack could have been based on, even managing a full-stop and coda successfully, something I’m not sure I’ve ever heard employed effectively.

A well-placed respite of brevity with the vocal distortion of Triachus leads into the even more spread at ‘Fenp…’, finally giving way to the aforementioned Plasmoid.  Thereafter, though already fully enveloped by Jeffs’ nuanced manipulation of mood, we’re swept into the affair even further, as Kinesthesia breaks out the (relative) beats on long-players Sanq – a very Analogue Bubblebath 3 harsh-edged affair – Flicklife – akin to a long-lost Konami classic – and the cinematic and lush closer Xodi.

Even the extra material feels carefully applied: A long silence, giving us ample distance from the packaged presentation of the album, precede snippets of raw pre-album demos or instrumentation diddles.  It’s an interesting sketchpad of ideas at album’s end, again concluded with a long outro silence, which I normally feel like is a wash… Except in this case, keep the album on repeat; that silence is a wise break before stepping back into the involving swirl of the opener.

I don’t have enough of Chris Jeffs’ stuff in my catalogue.  I’ve sat on Kinesthesia for a while, never giving it the same fair consideration as Aphex / AFX stuff, which is certainly stupid in the first place, but an outright shame, given how entrancing and, by my reviewing opinion, perfect this album is.