I Guess Sometimes I Need to Be Reminded of How Much You Love Me

Few artists can take a genre, deconstruct its most central ideas, and make it sound good. Magnetophone, though, have managed to mangle drum'n'bass in the subtlest of ways, and create a beautifully rhythmic, melodic composition with varying emotional and sonic highs and lows. The stirring complexity of I Guess Sometimes I Need to Be Reminded of How Much You Love Me is equally as engaging as any Squarepusher record (another drum'n'bass deviant) but is able to maintain an ambient quality that comes very unexpectedly considering the terrain that Magnetophone tackles. They mess around with synthesizers and drum machines, almost banging them about trying to make them bleed. It's intelligent dance music with more structure than Autechre, and almost post-rock less the drum/guitar/basslineup. Thematically, I Guess Sometimes... evokes a darkly elegant tone (or elegantly dark) that seems to fit in comfortably with many of their 4AD labelmates. 4AD has taken great strides to shake themselves of the gauzy and ethereal sounds that defined the label in the '80s, and with Magnetophone's experimental techno some might wonder if it is even the same label that released the Cocteau Twins' or This Mortal Coil's records. Whatever the case, I Guess Sometimes... is an excellent addition to their already impressive catalog of emerging sounds and stands apart from the crop of played-out electronica artists of the late '90s.