Akufen – My Way

I still come back to this album again and again through the years. There is emotion behind the repetition and an unmistakable identity that makes this a fine point in time. I don’t find this dated or old at all. It’s just… unique.

Akufen’s early works, back to his Reno Disco alias, have a rawness and a clear fingerprint that many other artists simply strive for during years or even decades to achieve.

Listening back to this again in 2025, it's more obvious than ever how seismic a shift this sound was at the time. This album came out shortly after the genesis of the glitch house genre, and while you need to go back to Matthew Herbert's earlier albums to hear the true beginnings, Akufen iterated the sound in a significant way. The cuts and glitchery are much more prominent and jerky than Herbert's work. I still find "Deck The House" kinda fun with the dopey, hilarious vocal shouts, shuffled rhythm and the instantly infectious bassline. But good god the rest of it gets old fast. This is an immaculate-sounding album but so style-compact that it does pretty much nothing else except be Glitch House All Capitals. I'll give a shout out to "Skidoos" though, with that lush backing pad, dub tech stabs and more restrained sample glitchery. It steers a little more towards early Swayzak and is quite hypnotic. The rest of the album, however, has aged less than gracefully IMHO.

The electronic audience, always so conservative, turned their backs to this fantastic take of Todd Edwards-isms. Whatever. Leave them with their vanilla synth pads and 4/4 - to me this album being released at the peak of force tracks,mille plateaux and broken beat made me think that music reached the future, but here we are.

in retrospective - a style that dated quite fast, today I find most of the tracks on this album quite annoying

One of the most expertly crafted albums ever, My Way features a wealth of Minimal Techno and stuff almost reminiscent of The Avalanches style Plunderphonics. Tracks like Deck The House and Heaven Can Wait are mind-blowing in how well they are composed jumping from sample to sample.

My copy loops the same groove incredibly much. Anybody have the same problem?

Skidoos is just goose bumps every time. What a track. You really need some good low end extension to do Marc’s music justice - there’s a lot going on down there!

Keep coming back. There is nothing like it, just gets better with every listen!

This album is revolutionary. Deck The House through Late Night Munchies is a truly divine run. If you don't come away from this album with new reflections on sound and sampling, listen to it again.

Does Late Night Munchies sample the beat from Radio by Wishmountain?