Polish drill-n-bass tradesman Bogdan Raczynski needs a good PR man. A good PR man would tell Raczynski that press releases are meant to introduce journalists to the artists and provide some background information that could be used in a review. Raczynski writes his own press releases, and he sees them as a forum to tell me (the reviewer) what a worthless, lazy, unoriginal parasitic worm I am. I quote: "Let's be honest... you just write shit-ass reviews and interviews to further your own career."
Fair enough. But I refuse to be dragged down into the mud with Raczynski, and rather than panning his album in retribution, I'm giving it a fair listen. So it kind of sucks that Raczynski has actually gone and made a good (if a bit odd) record. The 11-track Thinking of You is a concept album of sorts, supposedly about the pain of unrequited love. And judging from the harshness of these digital textures, there's much pain in Raczynski's life. But there's beauty, too, and he knows how to shuffle and mingle the two in a compelling way.
Witness the opening track, "All I Want is to Be by Your Side But You Don't Care." It begins with a choppy, hip-hop-inspired drum break that wouldn't sound out of place on a DJ Shadow record. Then, it folds in spoken words (I believe, Raczynski's native Polish), building tension slowly until releasing into a synthesized music box melody combined with some distorted, horribly out of key-- but strangely affecting-- singing.
This swirling of the pretty and the ugly in a whirlpool of erratic beats and cheap, customized synths will undoubtedly remind many of the work of Raczynski's label boss, Aphex Twin. And indeed, much of Thinking of You compares to Aphex's work circa Come to Daddy. There are fewer moments of transcendent beauty here-- the lovely, minute-long "Thinking of You Thinking of Me" is the only beatless ambient track-- than on an Aphex Twin record, but Raczynkski exhibits the same skill for constructing beats and twisting sounds into something alien and new.
The interplanetary "Unsatisfied Consumer" sounds like the work of a programmed Groovebox accidentally plugged into a 220-volt socket, with hectic, splattered beats and impossibly high vocal samples. More menacing still is "You As an Out-of-Control Extension of Me," which features a drawn-out, orchestral string sample beneath a bed of booming drums and a throbbing, ominous bassline. Raczynski may not be the most ingratiating Polish expatriate, but he knows how to work his laptop.
