3 out of 5

Label: Mille Plateaux

Producer: Alec Empire

Aright, you got me, I’ll admit I was expecting this to be some further house / beat stuff from Alec.  I guess too many years of stocking “Winter Rave” albums in the dance section of Tower just had me assumin’.  But had I checked the label on this – Mille Plateaux – I probably wouldn’t have been so surprised at the minimal ambient bleeps that simmered through my headphones.  The title and look of the album are very fitting – it’s a very chilly listen, the beats coming from far away.  This is what hindered it overall, for me, preventing it from achieving the sort of organic feel of Aphex Twin’s ambient work (to which this is absolutely similar – there are even some shared sound effects that pop up… though I don’t mean to suggest that Richard James has ownership on squiggly noises), and typical of Alec, most of the compositions just go on for one round too long without developing it to the point of hypnotic – rather he finds a smooth beat and lets it ride up to a point before tossing some external elements in there, then returns to the beat and just keeps it going… not building on top of it.  The external elements are generally interesting, rewarding if you’re listening closely but not distracting from the overall listen.  But again, there’s not really a sense of growth to any given track.  Where it starts is where it ends.

The overall sequencing is great, though, long stretches of chilly rumble broken up by some more upbeat tracks toward the tail end of the album, and the production is as great as it has been on all of Alec’s stuff I’ve listened, that really worn, echo-y sound that distills the electronicness of the whole thing.  That it’s purposefully arranged into these distancing compositions is notable, and entirely worth some ear time, but does show it’s “recorded on the side” roots more than some of the other Mille stuff.