4 out of 5

Label: Warp Records

Produced by: Richard D. James

I originally listened to this in its 2001 rereleased form, which added the tracks ‘Portreath Harbour’ and ‘Redruth School’ before closer ‘Quino – Phec.’ That subsequent edition was not a remaster, just tacked those two tracks on, and given the slight rearrangement of music, I figured I could / should give the original a listen to see if it changed the experience in any notable way.

…It doesn’t. Surfing is an amazing mix of AFX-edged acid and the more ambient side of RDJ’s work that was prominent in the early 90s, which made it a perfect “definitional” album for inclusion in the Artificial Intelligence series: an early on mic drop of how expansive IDM could be, in case Ambient Works was a bit too tame, or Analogue Bubblebath too clubby. But see my original review linked above for more blabber on that. Specific to this release, my main (only) issue with the album is that the midsection of Supremacy II and UT1 – Dot sag a bit, focusing on mean, somewhat static beats that just run a little past their time, and pairing two tracks like that in a row. Outside of that, Sine Waves is a complete thought, whether in this 9-track version or the 11-song one. Which doesn’t quite make sense, except that the two bonus tracks are of such quality as to add to the album positively, while arguably ‘Redruth’s percussion is way more organic sounding than anything on the album, making it a bit of an outlier – but rearranging the emotive ‘Quino – Phec’ to the end kind of solves for that. Meanwhile, if you remove that slight runaround, i.e. this version, you never have to have that moment of “this is cool, but it doesn’t really match the rest of the release…?”

That said, the only downside to owning this version is that there’s nothing additive; i.e. if you have the option or choice, I’d always go with the 2001 edition.