Throughout the mid- and late-nineties a lot of us raised on LOVELESS and QUIQUE, became disillusioned with our favorite artists. Autechre, then Bjork, Seefeel, then Goldie.

They became artists with audiences of the mind. We could go there, but there were no promises of hooks, best new thing, or nudity.

It was as if, rather than alienating themselves from the cognoscenti, Slowdive, by way of Talk Talk’s LAUGHINGSTOCK, with PYGMALION, short-circuited the Ebeneezer Good dance guitar-to-art-soul pipeline, and made a record that people like me danced to all alone. There was no outreaching arm of joy; it all reached inward

So we did everything all alone to it. But we didn’t know how to talk about it—and so it became a private thing we couldn’t share.

I drove home from work today listening to TRI-REPETAE. A tablet of late-nineties electro.

What struck me was how sneaky and intense all the nods to hip-hop were. The aspirating microseconds of human beatbox, the pre-Serato scratch, and, my nearest if not dearest, the stressed-out SUV kicker box bass. TRI-REPETAE is such a language expert’s album for hip hop and electro geeks, mind-melted on how these two odd signals emitted from distant points came to share a common language.

There are a lot of nerds who secretly want to lock into Gucci Mane’s dreams.

Everything beautiful begins with uncool.