None of the chirpy, intricate, eclectic tracks on I Care Because You Do sound dated, certainly not in any heinous way. Richard James's work stands outside any genre cages and continues to satisfy dedicated listeners. This is at least partially due to James's twisted, bad-boy sense of humour: the title of the disc alone is something of an ironic display. I Care is a sound introduction to James's peculiar, personal work, which ranges from symphonic to spartan to relaxing to unnerving, though it generally manages to be all those at once. The disc is cleverly constructed and juicily modern and it's easy to see why critics, struggling to understand James's emergent "ambient techno" early on compared him to minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. James was clearly influenced by these pioneers, but his music is more about stretching the limits of what one perceives to be music, of sound itself. -Mike McGonigal.

Drukqs is the 2001 release from Cornish Techno wizard Richard D James aka the Aphex Twin. Deified in the sphere of experimental dance-partly for his indisputable sporadic genius, but partly, it must be said, for his bullish refusal to play the whole "releasing records" game, and the subsequent mythology that such contrariness invariably prompts-every new release is greeted like it's the future of music on plastic. Drukqs is not that album, at least not quite: a 30-track double CD set that runs to over 100 minutes in length, it reads like a hastily-compiled joy-ride through the old Aphex countryside, full-on acid junglist scorchers like "Vord Hosbn" barrelling madly past serene, oddly beautiful ambient piano curiosities like "Avril 14th" and sometimes the two disparate disciplines blending, as in the truly surreal wreckage of "Mt Saint Michel + St Michaels Mount". It's a minor disappointment when you realise there's nothing here as epochal as "Come To Daddy" or "Windowlicker", two late-period Aphex singles so startlingly revolutionary that, on their release, they sounded like nothing else on God's good earth. But once that's out the way, and you're free to immerse yourself in the tangled depths of Drukqs, it's simply a relief to know that Aphex is still making music: fiendishly complex, lovably dumb, and still aeons ahead of the legion of imitators. -Louis Pattison.

Underworld are in many ways the godfathers of techno, and A Hundred Days Off is close to a decade after their seminal debut album Dubnobasswithmyheadman firmly established their presence; they have little left to prove. Largely responsible for stretching the boundaries of dance, Underworld almost single-handedly dragged the genre out of murky clubs and into the live arena, blended guitars with techno and even had a mainstream hit "Born Slippy Nuxx" along the way. Following a three-year recording hiatus that saw longtime DJ collaborator Darren Emerson leave the fold, the remaining members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have never sounded so buoyant. The tardy sequel to Beaucoup Fish, A Hundred Days Off has none of the former album's bristling claustrophobia and urban menace, favouring instead a joyous carnival feel riddled with cut-up live percussion and surging keyboard loops. Entrancing from the outset, the dreamy psychedelia of "Mo Move" sees Hyde languidly intone; "I dream that I'm chemical" while cascading percussion and the intensifying beat peak and dissolve. The storming 9-minute first single "Two Months Off" continues the surreal lyrical theme with Hyde this time chanting, "You bring light in", while mesmerising multi-layered rhythms and effects make for a sure-fire dancefloor dominator. There are quieter moments such as the breezy funk of "Solar Sytem" and lethargic folk-blues ambience of "Trim" (reminiscent of Moby circa Play), but while unmistakably Underworld throughout, A Hundred Days Off is their most unrelentingly upbeat and infectiously joyous release to date. -Christopher Barrett.

Once a roving maverick who skipped from euphoric rave to speed-metal to ambient soundscaping as if just to prove he could, recent years have seen Richard Melville Hall relax into a comfortable - and yes, lucrative - niche. On the surface, Hotel follows a similarly laid-back trajectory to his last two albums, Play and 18: a collection of melancholic torch-songs indebted to electro-pop, gospel, and David Bowie's "Heroes", it's typified by the rousing, keyboard-drenched likes of "Beautiful" and the twinkling, optimistic "Spiders". But that's not to say Moby is stagnating, exactly: for one, he's bravely jettisoned the vocal samples that powered the likes of "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?", relying instead on his own understated, faintly awestruck vocals - and, indeed, those of guest vocalist Laura Brown, whose sparse, synth-and-drum-machine cover of New Order's "Temptation" is a low-key highlight. But there's also a return to his raving roots on the pulsing, diva-led "Very", and a touch of politics on "Lift Me Up" - a song that hides its contempt for the Bush Administration amid a dark carnival of sweeping strings and disco-noir rhythms. -Louis Pattison.

Tom Findlay and Andy Cato have steadily been dismantling their chill-out crown ever since the single "At The River" saw them float into coffee-table ubiquity. Lovebox finally stretches the duo's eclectic tastes beyond any semblance of continuity or restraint, finishing the job started on last year's Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub). Named after Groove Armada's bi-monthly London club night, the duo's fourth album captures the excitement and diversity of pace you would expect from a masterful DJ set. While the opening track "Purple Haze" doesn't have a sniff of Hendrix's majestic histrionics, it is certainly Groove Armada's most rock & roll moment to date. Neneh Cherry lends her sultry voice to the lusty funk-fuelled hip-hop of "Groove Is On" and the urban soul of "Think Twice", and "Remember", with its languorous beat and swirling effects, nods toward their down-beat prime. Feisty dance-floor shakers are here in force though. "Madder", mixing the raps of MC M. A. D. with a pulsating bass and itchy guitar hook, kicks hard, and "The Final Shakedown" is an undiluted house anthem, albeit with a feisty ragga vocal. [+]

Moby is an ambitious man, both musically and philosophically, and that quality seeps into every aspect of Everything Is Wrong, from the wunderkind DJing that stretches the genre limits of techno to the angry, antiestablishment manifesto on the CD sleeve. The record's opening salvo of dancey club music sets the listener up for "All That I Need Is to Be Loved", which, out of nowhere, bludgeons would-be club kids with tuneless, mad vocals and punked-out guitar solos. The same bait-and-switch formula repeats twice on the CD at almost regular intervals in the industrial shriek of "What Love" and the sudden, slow, and acoustic bent and folksy vocals of "Into the Blue". All three shifts are jarringly abrupt. However, dance-floor continuity is in Moby's blood, and he uses these songs as parts one, two, and three of the underlying rage that drives the record's concept. Without these three tracks, in fact, you'd have a moody yet convincingly cohesive dance-athon, bouncing between house breakbeats ("Feeling So Real", "Bring Back My Happiness") and blissed-out trance ("God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"). Instead, Moby expresses his bewildered and desperate view of modern life by periodically yanking away the escape of blind, danceable ecstasy, using that discontinuity to express the eyes-wide-open ruminations of a furious idealist. -Matthew Cooke.

This is the studio work of London's prodigious dub godfather, Mad Professor, who takes Massive Attack's Protection album as raw material to create a completely new experience. Bits are added, dropped out, accentuated, run through sonic effects, drenched in reverb, turned inside out until the songs disappear and in their place emerge reborn textural soundscapes. No Protection gives a sort of discursive aural commentary on Protection's original songs, pointing out all the obscured details-the most minute percussive rings and beeps, the most mesmerising bass loops. -Roni Sarig.

Underworld returned from the Beaucoup Fish World Tour at the end of 1999, utterly exhausted after almost two years of international touring. It was the final straw for deck-wizard Darren Emerson, who picked up his record box, jetted off to Uruguay, and claimed his mantle as a globe-trotting international DJ, turning his back on Underworld forever. Rick Smith, however, reacted to the experience of coming off tour in a very different way. Locking himself in the studio for eight months, he watched and listened to tape after tape of the Underworld live experience, examining it, dissecting it, evaluating it. The result is Everything, Everything, a 75-minute compilation of the band's greatest onstage moments, from a rampant, super-fast "Shudder/ King Of Snake" to a breathtaking closing hybrid of techno milestones on "Rez/ Cowgirl"-not forgetting, of course, a frenetic thunder through the band's ultimate crowd-pleaser, the heavenly proto-trance anthem "Born Slippy". To the Underworld disciple, Everything, Everything will surely come as manna from heaven. -Louis Pattison.

After their groundbreaking debut, brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll quickly put trendy tags like "rave", "techno" and "hardcore" behind them. With Orbital 2, the brothers went to great lengths to show that some of their primary interests lay beyond the dance floor, as influences like Miles Davis and Steve Reich crept into the fragmented, floating arrangements. Atmospheric tracks such as "Lush 3-1" and its near relative "Lush 3-2" transcended established electronic formulas by breaking away from regular beat patterns, and they borrowed Opus III vocalist Kirsty to create the catchy, entrancing mesmerizer "Halcyon + On + On". Orbital had come a long way from their breakthrough single "Chime", and by all indications would never go back again. -Aidin Vaziri.