Landing in 1998 between the endlessly imitated Chiastic Slide (1996) and the deceptively impenetrable ‘Confield’ (2001), LP5 and the following year’s EP7 feature some of Ae’s most effortlessly fucked rhythm mechanics; less abstract than much of what came after it, more complex and interwoven than what preceded it – just end-to-end brilliance.

Arriving at a time when bedroom producers were still busy trying to emulate the glitched prism of Chiastic Slide, LP5 unexpectedly shifted perspective in typical Ae style, seemingly toning down the DSP’s and slowly funnelling into the algorithmic-aping abstraction of their new millennial output lying in wait just around the corner. LP5 was the last in a run of albums that still allowed harmonic and melodic logic to penetrate their arrangements – with a funked/jerking emphasis that made for some of the most advanced and propulsive music of their career.

The pure energy of ‘777′ reflects the endless unravelling of their sets around that time – a forever shifting arrangement of drums and synths deployed and made for movement, while ‘Vose In’ takes formative electro landscapes and shifts them into unstable domain, all cascading synths crumbling through space. Tears also flow on this one; the lonely nerve-ending melody and key changes on ‘Corc’ supplying some of the most sentimental work in the Ae canon, while ‘Drane2’ provides a prototype for the desolate Gamelan topographies that opened ‘Confield’ 3 years later, at the dawn of a new century.

One of the most multi-faceted and deadly Ae albums, no question.