o9 Church of the Ghetto P.C.

Is it worth mentioning that his album has a press release of such astonishing hyperbole and pretension that even I would be ashamed of it? Probably not. But back on the subject of post-modernity, this is further evidence that the further in the future you try and set your work, the more rooted in its influences it will become. Hailed as "high-priest" and "old-testament", the product of a "flaming laptop", this is in fact something like a best of bleep. If any of you were at a UK university around, say, 1996-97, a band called Wonderwall played Britpop covers. If they had recorded their own stuff, were any good, and did the same for bleep, laptopica and Warp, they would sound just like o9.

All of which might sound like a snooty criticism - moi? - but it's not. Throughout this patchwork of Autechre, Hecker, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin et al, there are great tunes, clever sonic tricks and hard-as-nails beats. And on final track Terminal Brown - yes, you can probably guess, they all have titles like that, Terminal Something - o9 goes some way to pushing things forward. It also has the fine advantage over many of those artists undeniably present here of being coherent and a sensible length, without too many insane shit-in-a-balloon-being-rubbed-with-an-electrified-cello-bow excursions.

o9's biog is a complete mystery, but well done to Schematic for finding him and forcing him to commit to tape this engaging and clever long-player. Just don't lose the CD case, as you'll never manage to work out who this chameleon of an album is by.