158 beats per minute? Well, if you insist. - John Peel after playing Rip Off on 1/5/93.
Peel may well have been making a virtue of the frantic bpm on this piece of acid techno, but I find myself drawn to its more orderly qualities. The squelches and burbles of the first two and a half minutes sound like things being picked apart and broken down. It’s not unpleasant to listen to particularly, but it is gnarly, and gives off a sense that your state of mind is kinked and warped. That the pressures and strains of everyday life will chip away at your composure. This is set in from the moment you wake up until you go to bed.
But if that sounds depressing, it’s all put into glorious perspective by the recurring moment of pure synesthesia at 2:38, 3:33 and finally from 5:17 that sound like a broken universe, or a fractured state of mind urgently putting itself back together again. A jigsaw puzzle magically completing itself. Out of chaos, we get order again.
It’s a banger, I grant you, and yet somehow also one of the most meditative tunes I’ve heard in a while. This could be deliberate on the part of Oliver Lieb and Jorg Henze, the men behind Psilocybin given that the other two tracks which made up the Sub-Level 6 EP alongside Rip Off contain 160 and 170 beats per minute, respectively. And should the onset of winter and the approach of Christmas have you wishing to get your mind completely blitzed, then please turn the title track up loud.
Video courtesy of GermsGems.
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