From an early 2006 release on Dubsided that recently found its way onto my desktop, “You’re All Over My Head” follows none of the rules I’ve come to expect from minimal techno. I feel like this expounds on the growing respect for Rose, even at his sloppiest and half-hearted. And on first listen, “thrown together” is the easiest and most dismissive way to describe it. Machinery hiccups, swishing percussion and Rose’s emotionless utterances (“it’s a lot of ____” and “I know”) open the tune, laying a straight path suddenly broken into with a vibrant and destinctly vintage sample (I thought my mp3 player was on the fritz). Of all the songs, Rose chose The Cyrkle’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” a tune I coincidentally wrote about last year — a safe bet for a selection few would recognize. While chopped up and repasted to fit his fancy, the sample runs longer than most would dare include in a dark, thumping tune like this. It vanishes back into the murk with an anxious little synth progression taking its place. Though The Cyrkle interrupts once more, the rest of the track remains largely the same, leaving listeners a little bewildered. Not an ellegant tune by any stretch of the imagination, but Rose’s choice to scramble his momentum with a bitter-messaged, sugary pop song provides unexpected continuity. This probably only sees use as a DJ tool or headphone track, but “You’re” traffics in ideas as much as grooves.

Les Petits Pilous, “Jolie Fille”

I really wanted to take Tal’s unspoken challenge to write about this tune, but I’m at almost as much of a loss as he was. Les Petits Pilous (Small Cotton Flannels, natch) are a young Boyz Noize band taking the grating electro/rock/rave sound to peaked out heights. Of the songs I can hear easily, “Nice Bird” is the most ambitious and disorienting: To get yourself in the mood, imagine being separated from your friends at a packed rave about 15 minutes after swallowing what you think is e with a desperate desire to reconnect. Rhythmically obtuse, the coarse patterns shift at what feels like odd times and swell in intensity, only to drop listeners without a second thought. “This is how kids perceive rave or something,” Tal guessed, and it seems like that perception is practically no wave — no rave even (Tal’s brilliant combination, see comments), a rip-your-face-off-and-poke-fun-at-it mindset. Much to my surprise and delight, this nu-rave scene is getting more interesting instead of less.