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Wednesday, June 24, 2009 

Fear is not knowing

And today the last of my 1999 album blurbs is up, on ยต-Ziq's peerless Royal Astronomy. To this day it's one of the few IDM albums that I think is really worth your time outside of the some of the big, obvious names (I mean, I probably prefer ...I Care Because You Do slightly, but Richard D. James is a little sui generis).

I had a roommate in college who was a big Warp fan and also an inveterate gamer (lots of Final Fantasy 7 in our dorm room). I remember the day he bought Royal Astronomy and was basically like "This is video-game music!" I think at the time I took that to mean I shouldn't bother (he might have even suggested as much), but your review makes me want to finally give it a listen. (I do own and like Lunatic Harness.)

When it came out, or at least when my friend Pete got it in high school, my friends and I were playing a fair amount of the old PS game Monster Rancher. And I swear, at least one of the tracks here ("Slice," I think?) sounds exactly like the happy town music from that game with some slight, lysergic distortion applied to it.

If you have any trouble tracking it down, drop me an email and I'll upload it for you.

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About me

Ian Mathers is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stylus, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, PopMatters, and elsewhere. He does stuff and it magically appears here.

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