Pardon me, but it’s a ******* masterpiece: Akufen “My Way”

Akufen
“My Way”
(Force Inc” 2002)

I first heard this stop-you-in-your-tracks, one-off of a record in the early 2000s. I think it was an interest in all things Matthew Herbert at the time that somehow led me to the delightfully original madness that is Akufen (Marc Leclair) and his debut album, “My Way.” As we’re looking back – it remains, pardon me, a fucking masterpiece.

Ambient, glitchy, sexy and hilarious by turns – it unfolds for the listener slowly, beginning with washes of ambient sound, gently insistent bips and bops appearing under foot. By track 3, “Skidoos”, the more glacial sounds are receding under a bed of Akufen’s trademark ‘micro-house’ sampling technique: fragments of radio broadcasts creating a shifting palette of non-sequitur tones and styles over the top. By ‘Deck the House’ or ‘Jeep Sex’ we’ve left the brilliant white of an art gallery, for the busy throng of a packed dance floor.

Kick. Hats. “Turn!” . Metal bar. “Maybe!” Walking bass. Disney flute! PWM stab. Delays. Beep. Kick. FM radio. WTF?

Marc Leclair, doing his Akufen dj thing at Fabric, London, 2003 (Photo: Thomas Venker)

I was hardly one of the dance music cognoscenti in 2002. But encountering this record for the first time, it was so clearly a record from a ‘maker’ – an assembly of brilliant ideas, held together by a gloriously confident musicality and as unapologetic as all good art should be. Given dance music’s often slightly po-faced reputation, “My Way” is fabulously happy to cock a snook at good taste (I mean that title, come on – enable Sinatra mode guys), walk mad ideas up to the cliff edge, before dancing off into the sunset. Its sonic precision also reminded me of hearing Cornelius for the first time: instruments delicately (or noisily) located in space, only as needed, maximum zing, an editor working forensically, wearing immaculate white gloves. You simply know you’re in the hands of a maestro.

Why is ‘My Way’ a Kaput 25 album though?

Perhaps because it was a kind of one-off – the great man’s output of 12”s and remixes is continuous but there’s never been a sequel as such. We’re so deluged by people trying to recapitulate the past. It’s brave to sometimes stop and just say “that was it, that was the one we had to make, and now it’s done.”

Perhaps also because of the sampling ethos it’s built on, this record is just ageless. It still sounds like yesterday and the day after tomorrow. It remains a touchstone release because it’s somehow simultaneously woozy and forensic, languid and n-n-nervous, quizzical and sexy. These feel like contemporary ways to feel, contrasts we still fail to resolve as we shift anxiously from our real selves to the social avatars we’ve decided to become so invested in.

For me the DNA of this album remains so insanely vital. It keeps alive the musician-as-mad-professor schtick we should always encourage. And if the DIY culture in music means anything, surely it means honing your skill and doing it your own way?
Alexander Mayor