Kerrier District 1

Like so much in Luke Vibert‘s long and bogglingly prolific career this from 2004, originally on Aphex Twin‘s Rephlex label, treads a very fine line between foolishness and seriousness. Even the artist name is a joke: because he was taking his musical cues from Metro Area, because they took their name for the geographical designation for New York, he decided to name himself after a rural local government district in his native Cornwall. And the slow chugging disco loops — heavy on the claps and cowbells, and shot through with house and techno riffs — had whimsical melodies and cheeky, cheesy voice samples slathered all over them. But what could have seemed like pastiche or insincerity was rendered serious by the sheer weight of the grooves, the broad grin implicit in the music obviously genial, not mocking. The Kerrier District series has reached four album-length volumes to date, but this is the motherlode and remains a thing of total joy.