dubnobasswithmyheadman

dubnobasswithmyheadman was the first rave record with a narrator. Karl Hyde's stream-of-consciousness phrases drift across Rick Smith's shifting loops on 'Cowgirl', 'Dirty Epic' and 'Dark & Long', turning club repetition into interior monologue. Two tracks in the back half are weaker than the rest, which is all that keeps it out of the top three. The floor keeps moving while the songs look inward.

Karl Hyde had spent a decade in bands that went nowhere and Rick Smith had spent it learning machines, and the record they made when they stopped trying to write songs is the most complete world on this page. Cowgirl runs nine minutes and arrives somewhere it did not start. Hyde treats language as another loop, cut from overheard speech and shop signs, which supplies continuity without supplying songs. It is the better record to live inside and the second-purest answer to what this page asks.