Various - Alt.Frequencies

A varied very CD,

Dunderhead's "Doditsu" is a dubby Massive Attack-ish affair with a bizarre vocal.

Tom Jenkinson's "Vogon & I" is a slow aphexy piece with fat crunchy beats, distorted acid and muted synth melody.

Freeform's "Dice" is a funky little piece but one which ultimately fails to engage me.

Gescom's "SKFL2" does without the completely twisted and distorted sounds that had already become part of most Autechre tracks, but the structure of the track - 7/4 time, bizarre rhythm changes, mutating melodies, and indeed the integration of the melodic and rhythmic sides of the composition, remain intact. A definite high point.

David Kristian's "ooohville" is a strange piece of drum-n-bass with easy listening samples and a variety of breaks.

TJ's "Happy Little Wilberforce" is a bass-heavy breakbeat workout which at time sounds a bit like someone electronically emulating human beatbox sounds. It's undeveloped melody does not add much to the cleverly constructed rhythm track.

Coma's "Zero" is another d&b track with lush instrumentation and a rolling break, kinda non-formula logical progression. Very nice - a real pleasure to listen to, and something about this track gives the impression that it is gradually getting faster.

Replicant's "Analiz" is another high point for me - a tapping ambient dub epic which harks back to those old comps on Beyond and Apollo which I remember so fondly.

"Aleister's Requim" by Further is a gorgeous filmic ambient piece, Bladerunner meets Twin Peaks.

Plasma Lamp's "Lounge Lizard" is a rather irritating bleepy ambient affair with surging bass and odd beats appearing about half way through.

And finally there's a little noodly shuffling bonus track at the end - rather nice.

Overall my conclusion is that the tracks on here which I enjoyed the most are the least innovative or experimental, whether that is an indictment of me or of the artists I'm not sure!