Bogdan Raczynski - You're Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever [CD]

The new album by Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski 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. 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 algorithmic 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 three albums in that year alone. He went on to explore hallucinatory, bassbin-rattling IDM, outsider junglism, and traditional Polish folk music, amongst other paths. He collaborated with Björk, produced a soundtrack for a PlayStation game, and remixed the likes of Autechre, Jónsi, 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.