Music Arcades: Various: The Braindance Coincidence

This is another one of those albums I'd forgot I had. When the random number generator picked its title out of my database, I wasn't even quite sure what it was. It turns out to be a "bargain sampler" (a fiver from Fopp) from Rephlex Records, the label co-founded by Aphex Twin.

"Braindance is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres, e.g traditional, classical, electronic music, popular, modern, industrial, ambient, hip hop, electro, house, techno, breakbeat, hardcore, ragga, garage, drum and bass, etc"

As I type, I'm only about three quarters of the way through the album — listening to music has taken a back seat to the news in recent days — so I can't comment in any detail, beyond saying that much of the music seems to have its wits about it, which is sadly not always the case in the po-faced electronica/IDM scene.

Let me tell you instead about the time I got asked if I was Mike Paradinas a.k.a. μ-Ziq. Courtesy of Mixing It, back in 2004, I won a competition to get a free ticket to a club night organised (curated?!) by Mr Paradinas — in the spirit of his alias, the challenge was to name three acts other than μ-Ziq whose names included letters in the Greek alphabet: I offered Alpha & Omega, The Beta Band and Delta 5. The club gig was a rum affair, to be honest, and I didn't stay long, but I did hang around to see Leafcutter John, and while I was there, well, I got asked if I was Mike Paradinas. That's it, really. My hair now is frighteningly respectable, but at the time I looked vaguely like this picture, so I understood the mistake. I guess I could have had fun and pretended for a bit, but I knew my imagination would run out and my deception would quickly be exposed.