The Tuss
Rushup Edge

No need to get lost in vacuous and intellectualistic turns of phrase: "Rushup Edge" by the moniker "The Tuss" is simply one of the many pseudonyms used for yet another work by Aphex Twin.

The album's label says it all: Rephlex.

Here are more appetizing (or perhaps tired?) signals: the foolish humor and misleading name The Tuss (which means erection in the Cornish dialect), and all those related outpourings, such as some "fake" pages on myspace (overflowing with cheap double entendres and "phallic" images in 2-D graphics): "Aphex style".

Then it's obvious: the music.

Staying true to his practice, Aphex leverages the unparalleled experience gained from the various projects he has undertaken (as already done in the controversial latest official l.p., "druks"), to produce six excellent episodes between Braindance, and classic yet possibly anachronistic schizophrenic experimentalism.

If you know the most important episodes of Richard's research journey (Analord, Caustic, and Polygon Window, and the Ambient works), you can't help but notice the standout features.

The martial and lucid rigor of Analord's electro ("Synthacon 9", a killer track!!), the now established and cultured (?) piano phrasing used for many small melodic figures ("Rushup I Bank 12"), aptly masked by the expanded synth timbre in other tracks ("Last Rushup 10"). Or yet again, the ambient shifts, wonderfully "ethereal," of "Last Rushup 10", rather than the whirling and "intoxicating" drum beats of one of the most beautiful pieces, "Rushup I Bank 12".

Curious then is "Shiz Ko E", which in my opinion could be (given the timbral nature) a mockery of the now overused, and unbearably false, trend of 16-bit sound inaugurated by those geniuses "Daft Punk" and 80s style, now repeatedly shovelled to us by every damn insipid dance duo appearing on the scene. A valid operation anyway, as well as hilarious.

Surely nothing new under the sun: but in the amateurish and pretentious landscape of electronic music for listening, works like these are a godsend.

- "Praise be to Richard D. James".

- "ALWAYS PRAISE BE".

- "AMEN".