Cauterised - Trifler vs. the 70s

This is a beautiful album and, best of all, it has a sense of humour. You will laugh out loud; you will be driven to the edge of love and back again. You will be tried and tested and wooed and pursued. You will be unable to resist. The ebb and flow are like spring tides sweeping you on the wave of pleasure.

It led me from childish giggling to electric beauty. My palms sweated, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, my heart throbbed and my groin filled with blood. I wanted to lick the music. This made me want to watch film noir while drinking something fluorescent and full of umbrellas. There are moments which are laugh-out-loud and moments of the kind of vertigo that comes from the starkly sublime. I don't believe in the concept of genius but if I did then Cauterised would be on the cusp.

This album will make you want to make your life exciting and artistic. It will lead you on strange nights of fedora hats, scarlet ladies and old fashioned drinks. Your life will become a cross between The Great Gatsby and Shameless; a choir of opiates, characters and laughter on the edge of madness. This album is an orgy of exciting sounds yet somehow never feels overdone, conceited or clashing. It is as though Cauterised has harnessed all of the best moments of the last century and grouped them into an a capella harmony. Each voice is audible but subsumed into the whole.

That said, this is not the most original of music. It is nothing that Aphex Twin has not done before, not to mention Lemon Jelly and countless others. Cauterised is not the kind of vital energetic pioneer that Picasso or Van Gogh represent. He is simply a refined and distilled example of excellence which represents an existing genre, like Monet or Dali. He is fine wine over cocktails; opera over punk. In short, this is the album for the connoisseur of sampled music. Cauterised is an exemplar, not an inventor.

The album opens with a light laugh and a knowing wink and a nod at other genres. The jazz is blended effectively into the other samples and the mood is changed swiftly and efficiently. There was no dud track and not a moment in which I was bored or uncertain. This was a mature and artistic display of what sound-blending should and can be. If I were Hollywood I would be on the phone now screaming and begging for him to do movie soundtracks. His manipulation of mood and tone is second to none.