The perfect soundtrack to your next doomscrolling session. A new double disc anthology set from Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski, which pairs his critically-acclaimed 2024 album, 'You’re Only Young Once But You Can Stupid Forever', with the 2025 companion set (previously only available digitally), 'Slow Down Stupid'.

The main album is a collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Mojo called it ““a satisfyingly lo-fi, fragile creation, it’s a nuanced, multi-layered insight into Raczynski’s increasingly becalmed world.” whilst DJ Mag said “By stripping the music to the barest sketetal parts, he discovers a more subtle, yet equally confounding beauty. It’s one worth taking from start to finish.”

On the second disc, the producer stretches out the material into even more languid sonic pastures, a cheeky deconstruction of both the ‘slowed and reverbed’ phenomenon, and the endless relax/yoga/meditation app/playlist hustle beaming from one dystopian tech platform to the next.

TRACK LISTING

CD1 - You’re Only Young Once But You Can Stupid Forever:
1. Gearee
2. Newdiv
3. Fairalign
4. Coughyspns
5. Bangsaft
6. Djstus
7. Hundrecision
8. Zownthram
9. Visionsrevisions
10. Bowgh
11. Fallybli
12. Faq
13. Yewt
14. Shttwobe
15. Sicksicksicks
16. Deweyedair
17. Rew
18. Gauq

CD2 - Slow Down Stupid:
1. Order Is A Fig
2. Meant For Our Imagination
3. What Is Real Is Blood
4. The Lengths The Worst Will Go
5. To Say She Hates It
6. Say It Before
7. Say It After
8. If Smart Is In Charge
9. Let Me Be
10. Stupid Forever
11. Slow Down

A collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Each piece is short and to the point, a record of perfect miniatures. Whilst this description may sound utopian, the album is conceived around themes of late stage capitalist brutality, hyper consumerism, online doom and alogorhithmic apocalypse. Beauty in the face of planetary collapse and 24/7 livestreamed genocide.

Rumoured to have been discovered by Aphex Twin sleeping on a park bench in Tokyo, Raczynski first appeared on the scene in 1999 with 3 albums in that year alone. He went on to explore hallucinatory, bassbin-rattling IDM, outsider junglism and traditional Polish folk music amongst other paths, collaborated with Björk, produced a soundtrack for a PlayStation game, and remixed the likes of Autechre, Jonsi, and CLIPPING. In 2019, Disciples began looking after his Rephlex era catalogue, putting together the Rave 'Till You Cry compilation of unreleased gold from the vaults, and reissuing his classic Samurai Math Beats LP. His last studio album, ADDLE, came out on Planet Mu in 2022.

"Bogdan was a massive inspiration for some of my tracks on the Drukqs album, the fact he was doing it all on a shit PC tracker… totally amazing. This was before 99.9 percent of people used the computer for everything. His records are so underrated." - Aphex Twin

TRACK LISTING

1. Gearee
2. Newdiv
3. Fairalign
4. Coughyspns
5. Bangsaft
6. Djstus
7. Hundrecision
8. Zownthram
9. Visionsrevisions
10. Bowgh
11. Fallybli
12. Faq
13. Yewt
14. Shttwobe
15. Sicksicksicks
16. Deweyedair
17. Rew
18. Gauq

Planet Mu presents ‘ADDLE’ – Bogdan Raczynski’s first album of new music in 15 years. Marking a change from the high-octane jungle tekno braindance for which he is most commonly known, here we find the Polish American musician in a more melodic and zen-like place of peace, which is ergonomic and decluttered, whilst also bittersweet and tinged with melancholy. ‘ADDLE’ is closest in spirit to 2001’s tender ‘myloveilove’, or the light-hearted ditties of this year’s ‘BANANS’ EP, but is also a markedly new milestone. A robust and bottom-heavy rhythm section juxtaposes with sad electronic tear jerkers, at points laced with the soft cooing wail of his vocals, which are loaded with a haunting, heavy and almost wounded emotion. Bogdan comments “Calm is great. You need to take a breather in the eye of the storm now and then. But the real growth happens in turbulence, when your feelings oscillate in and out of sync. It’s not dry land you’re after. You’re trying to build a new island while on a piddly raft. Beleaguered and weary you lay the foundation with your bare hands while the rain lashes your back; a new place for you and yours to moor yourself to until the next storm hits. ‘ADDLE’ is about that storm, its adjacent periphery, and what you look like, in and out, when you set foot. As space and time push against you, that process of adapting becomes an anchor. Among that state of being addled, out of flow, seemingly untethered, there is beauty.”

Although less unhinged and riotous than some of his previous work, ‘ADDLE’ is no less impactful. Lean, punchy and purposeful, this seemingly simple combination of beats and melody belies a razor sharp skill, which bursts with verve and virtuosity. Across its eight unique and moving tracks the listener experiences tenderness, feelings somewhere between unease and comfort, and a sense of reflection, with Bogdan seemingly gazing at twinkling stars, but with his view distorted by welling-up. Sonically, spaces range from razor-sharp choppage, juddering heavyweight head-nodders, bit-crushed siren squall and something akin to Philip Glass’ ‘Candyman’ score played through a high-tech-fairy-tale music box. There’s also a warming, life-affirming moment as close to deep house as Bogdan will ever comfortably get, neck-snapping metallic percussion, Casiotone on steroids and reverberant warehouse throb. Booming drum machines are a prominent factor too – reminiscent of early hip hop instrumentals – but spirited off somewhere, lost in purgatory. Bogdan Raczynski (born 1977) is a Polish-American electronic musician. Raczynski’s work draws inspiration from the chaotic breakbeats of jungle and hardcore rave as well as traditional Polish music and other sources. He has collaborated with Bjork, remixed Autechre, CLPNG and Jonsi from Sigur Ross, and toured with Aphex Twin, who commented how “his records are so underrated.” Bogdan was also a roster mainstay of Richard James’s seminal Rephlex label, with additional releases on Warp, Ghostly, Disciples and Unknown to the Unknown. A keen proponent of tech, he created a sample pack using pollution and recently collaborated with Polyend on a custom made banana-themed tracker.

TRACK LISTING

2LP
A:
1/LADDE
2/DLEDA
3/DLAED

B:
1/ELDDA
2/EADLD

C:
1/LDDAE
2/ADLDE

D:
1/ALDDE

Disciples follow up the raid on the archives of Black Lodge with ‘Rave "Till You Cry" by enigmatic producer Bogdan Raczynski, a collection of unreleased tracks and versions. Raczynski arrived on the scene in 1999 with not one but three albums released in quick succession that year alone on Rephlex Records. A unique operator even by Braindance standards, rumoured to have been discovered by Aphex Twin whilst sleeping rough in Tokyo. A steady stream of records followed, hyperactive broadsides of percussion set off by a winning knack for the buried earworm melody, much like his mentor Richard D James. He also memorably collaborated with Björk and remixed Autechre for Warp’s "10+3" compilation but things have been quiet since the release of his last studio album "Alright!" in 2007.

"Rave ‘Till You Cry" signals a return across 18 tracks selected and sequenced by Disciples, joining the dots between the outsider junglism of the "96 Drum n Bass Classixxx" ‘compilation’ and his earliest rephlexions on hallucinatory, bassbin-rattling IDM with "Boku Mo Wakaran". Across one CD or four sides of vinyl, the joyous sugar-rush tunes of classic 1990s Nintendo games meet drill-like breaks, ambient drone and slabs of bit-crushed noise. It also showcases a more introspective side to the Bogdan sound, the soundtrack to a labyrinth of tunnels loaded up with gurners starting to feel unwell as the early hours begin to dissipate into the harsh rays of morning light.

Much like the recent resurgence of Digital Hardcore’s Christoph De Babalon and the off-kilter time signature of recent records by Demdike Stare and Rian Treanor, Bogdan Raczynski’s return is a timely reminder of menace and beauty contained within irregular rhythm science. 

TRACK LISTING

156 S2n
134 32iii
318 22t7
220 S3d
329 15h
220 S1c
307 33m15
332 23t422
309 14ae2
213 213r
220 S2c
356 34h12
306 24n812
306 41dr
210 31c22
220 S5d
355 44ir
204 Fr