5 out of 5

Label: Clone Aqualung Series

Produced by: James Stinson

Appropriately titled. Discovered on DAT, what would’ve been the third outing for Stinson under the Transllusion banner, ‘A Moment of Insanity’s four tracks take the heartbeat electro of previous releases and rockets it forward into a dark future, producing music that’s mysterious, exciting, and still razor sharp nearly 20 years after its creation.

Insanity transitions from the murky and moody (and, like, almost grimey) Moment 1 – notes of Stinson’s aquatic fascinations with reverbed bells and effects over a background dirge – to cold dancefloor jerkiness on Moment 2, itself being overtaken by the robot revolution of discordant and frantic bleeps… a slight, humanizing keyboard ditty meanwhile trying to fight its way back to supremacy. Transllusion – Stinson – and the listener, are kept on edge in the struggle, wondering what’s next. Representing this in kind is Moment 3’s opening: clipped effects that _might_ be the relaxing chirp of birds, until 80s horror keys and a hefty, steady drumbeat come along to convince us otherwise. The beat kicks up and those keys go fully frantic, while those dang birds are chattering away and a further layer of tones tap-dances atop at random intervals… This is the genius sound of insanity taking over, with Moment 4 letting fully go of the reins. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a crazier track, per se – Movement 3 is the peak of aggression on the release – but its tone is a bemusing circus of sing-song and cluttered bloops over an upbeat backbone; we’ve given in to our moment(s), and it’s a glorious, head-spinning feeling.

An amazing extension of Transllusion’s future-pointed electronica, the four tracks on A Moment of Insanity take up as much creative space as any give full-length release. One could question if having more of this quality of stuff would have been good for us…