Admittedly, there's a major problem with this album, namely the lack of the sheer goofiness and insanity which Mr. James has cleverly emphasized just enough to keep IDM bores on their toes. But then again, when this was released, that wasn't as much of a problem for him, so while he may never come out with something like it again, I'm damn glad he did at least this. As should all of us.
Of course, there is some wigginess on here, namely the fact that there are no song titles, just wedges and pictures, and I'm still not sure what goes where after all this time. Figures as much. All very wannabe prog, I guess, but with a point -- I guess. Or maybe there isn't one and this is all just meant to make you concentrate on the music first and foremost, which is as good an explanation as any. What is of course particularly intriguing about these tracks is that none of them seem 'ambient' per se, instead finding odd rhythms without beat (and sometimes with) and aiming more for a meditative, focused on the song state as opposed to something which you can easily ignore. Screwing with expectations is always a nice thing, of course, and the fact remains this as much disturbs as it soothes, and of course sometimes it does this at once.
I remember the third track on disc one as being compared to Arvo Part, and that happened to be the one I played first when I finally got it. Truly, it's something. Strip away anything you know about Aphex the public figure and you'll hear this and be very quietly astounded, indeed moved. Not much else out there that in the simplest of ways conveys a feeling of high church ritual and hush, the softest of reflections, the carefullest of ponderings. Even if the background of Western music wasn't already there to condition you to think this way, that's pretty likely how you'd approach, or so I'd like to think.
And so it goes, strange coos of babies, subliminal melodies, things taken out of context and reassembled in contexts which don't quite sound out of place or distinctly wrong, but are still just that little bit wrong, and just that little more than music to fall to sleep by. Two and a half hours of it and I couldn't remove a single track, really, the way it's all put together and how it sounds. By the time it does finally conclude with the bottomless cold creep of the final track, an echoed percussion sound almost like a rippling raindrop and floating musical colors out of the wrong sort of space, things aren't quite what they seemed as when we started, and clearly we're not in Kansas anymore.