Richard D. James Album

Released

This is dead center of the IDM Bermuda Triangle, a genre that doesn’t exist but was called into service by music that definitely does. Was this the single most influential electronic album of the Nineties? Probably not because there is no such thing but man, if there was, it might be this. One of the levels here is rhythm, where Aphex keeps a generally simple frame, but then fills his plastic grid box with tiny, fractured dust, letting a simple downbeat be preceded by a ramping trill of atomized drum hits. It’s juicy synthetic chaos, the human and inhuman blended. (I mean, most of this is in 4/4 time—what James added to his beats was detail, not necessarily syncopation. Much of the programming here is too fast to read as concretely rhythmic information.) The other layer is the glassy legato beauty, the compositional flair of a Romantic. “Fingerbib”? National anthem of animated cats you study with and manga lawyers! A wobbly and benevolent world of fuzzy metal and sentient glass.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Suggestions
Freak Out! cover

Freak Out!

The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa
I Am Fog cover

I Am Fog

Ashley Paul
Soused cover

Soused

Scott Walker, Sunn O)))
Pomegranates cover

Pomegranates

Nicolas Jaar
Will cover

Will

Julianna Barwick
The Amateur View cover

The Amateur View

To Rococo Rot
Piece for Cello and Saxophone cover

Piece for Cello and Saxophone

Charles Curtis, Terry Jennings
Ruins cover

Ruins

Grouper
Amok cover

Amok

Atoms for Peace
A  Heart From Your Shadow cover

A Heart From Your Shadow

Michael Beharie, Teddy Rankin Parker