The Tuss - "Rushup Edge" EP

The Tuss - Synthacon 9 (Rephlex 2007)

The Tuss - Rushup Edge EP / Rephlex

Having listened to this literally minutes before I read The Guardian's take two weeks ago, consternation and thorough analysis were pretty much ruined in the straightforward sense for me almost immediately after I first heard Rushup Edge. Stylus quickly followed, and Pitchfork were on it today. Instead of arguing over who this really is straight away and detracting from the point of why you're here in the first place, let us start with the music. It's brilliant. Like spectacularly intricate mind-blowingly tight home-electro-guru-gone-wild detailed. There are so many ideas in these six tracks brimming to get out that 32 minutes is both not enough at all and just enough to whet the appetite for something more. It's been a long time since I've heard something quite like this.

It starts with "Synthacon 9" rushing up to the edge of your headphones or speakers with a buoyant melody that would not sound out of place with all this other garbled electro-blogging you've heard so much about lately. Its beats are intricate, flittering and twisted like "Windowlicker" in a wind tunnel. Throw in a little Kavinsky, sorry, Tepr, sorry, Moroder and you've got a good idea of where this is going. "Last Rushup 10" is the same thing with glittering laptop handiwork for the big-time. Each of these songs neighbors four minutes, but its composition and structure is worth listening to for more reasons than just the mathematics of it all; the playing is wizard-like.

Case in point: The quickly worked piano is the highlight of "Rushup I Bank 12," a mid-song breakdown the rose between glitchy IDM synth-styled thorns. And then Mario is handcuffed to a ceiling fan and sent for a ride on "Death Fuck." Once again, the piano comes in near the 4m30s mark and it's hard to imagine anything less angelic for a fuck of this supposedly deathly caliber.

With the Confederation Trough EP already out, Rephlex now have two EPs from a Cornish electronic mastermind. The big question everyone's asking right now is, has Richard D. James unveiled yet another alias before our eyes? Brian Tregaskin isn't talking, and neither is publisher Chrysalis. All the evidence is there, but this certainly wouldn't be my favorite trick of his. That time he fell asleep on a couch in New York... That might be my favorite Aphex Twin story. But I'll tell you something, if Brian Tregaskin is real and this is some mass of confusion, it is clear we have on our hands the heir-apparent to Aphex Twin's electronic mantle. Credit where credit is due... Wherever it's due. Good luck keeping a secret out here on the Internet, Brian. It's safe with us.