Have you seen the packaging for Richard D. James’ new Analord series? Go to rephlex.com and click on the floating faux-leather binder thing. It looks like one of those tacky menus with wipe-clean pages you find in fake posh restaurants, but I’ve heard it’s actually a well-made and rather desirable item, impressed with little golden AFX logos, capable of holding up to ten or so slabs of vinyl. You have to order the binder and first 12" online (this won’t be available in the shops, apparently) and then fill it with each subsequent Analord release over the next 12 months. I figured it’d be ready by now, that there’d be two releases before Christmas, but the design’s so deluxe it’s taken longer than expected to manufacture. I’m sure Rephlex has received thousands of orders on the back of what’s been a real down-low word-of-mouth campaign with zero publicity and promotion—it’s not like Aphex needs more exposure. I reckon if you’ve been to a Rephlex rave or heard Luke Vibert or Cylob spin at any point during the last 18 months then you’ve definitely heard some Analord stuff, quite smodgy and melodic in an analogue style. I can’t remember.

Way more retarded design-wise, but just as desirable, is the Bunker label’s limited-to-200-copies-only “Robot Dystopia” series of four 12"s. Each comes with no information other than a badly photocopied black and white A4 sheet featuring a drawing of either two giant dog skeletons on tanks terrorising an industrial landscape or a couple of salivating Dobermanns. The music’s murky as hell. The gloomiest tracks on Shitcluster’s horribly claustrophobic “Beyond A Joke” sound like some infernal disco record played backwards then smeared in tar while a satanic voice intones “Evil lurks in Den Haag” over mangled tape loops. The two EPs by Gothenburg’s electro powerhouse Luke Eargoggle, “If I Were A King” and “Nya Regler”, are about a year old and sound pretty dated compared to his recent releases, but his spindly Atari stalker gear still hits the spot. For me, the most enjoyable one is “Infiltration And Extraction” by Unit Black Flag, a shameless John Carpenter/Assault On Precinct 13 rip-off.

The real thing—that is, the disco version of “The End” by Carpenter—turns up early on during the second How To Kill The DJ mix album, an amazingly scrambled yet strangely coherent 42-track mutant rave freestyle odyssey put together by the dudes from Optimo, Twitch and Wilkes, whose insane Sunday night knees-up is the only excuse you need to visit Glasgow. Their bumpy “Optimo” ride on disc one is a euphoric DJ masterclass—peruse the mammoth tracklist on kill-the-dj.com—at one point ramming Nurse With Wound’s “Two Shaves And A Shine” into Blondie’s “Atomic”, while the second disc’s “Espacio” mix is a comparatively conservative pysch-folk fry-up involving the likes of Os Mutantes and Sun City Girls. Just-so Paris imprint Tigersushi has great taste—you should buy their records for the sleeves alone. This one apes Warhol’s “Double Elvis” but with Keith and Johnny’s heads replacing the King’s, making them appear far more respectable than they’ve ever looked. Also, the American woman whinging on and on about Optimo queue-jumpers at the start of the mix is the one and only Jill Mingo, publicist to the indie dance scene stars.

Those fruity tastemakers over at D*I*R*T*Y in Paris follow up last year’s excellent Dirty Diamonds compilation with a second edition, and again, being a bunch of arty idlers who can’t walk past a car without checking themselves in the window, the quasi-biblical sleeve’s great. In fact, everything about this record is well-designed, from the impeccable (unmixed) track selection (Simon Dupree’s “Kites” and Yello’s “Daily Disco” are outrageous) to the website from which it sprung, d-i-r-t-y.com, a hipster resource crammed with mp3s, interviews, links and plenty of useless information. “The idea was to release a product in tune with the way we listen to music today in the form of playlists more than whole albums,” they explain. “These days we have access to everything for free, the only real value resides in the selection.” The iPod rules their lives, basically, and here are their top tracks to put on yours.

VICE’s incredible Cocadisco night begins 2005 in style: on Thursday, January 13, playing records and stuff will be Jackson, the genius Parisian producer behind “Utopia” and whose debut album promises to be the next step for electronic music, and top director Chris Cunningham. So come to The Social (5 Little Portland Street, London W1; Oxford Circus tube), from 7p.m. to midnight. It’s free. Thanks to DJ Raphael for another killer Xmas mix.

PIERS MARTIN

Theydon Bois’s Oh-Four Top Nine (in no particular order):
1. Black Devil “Disco Club EP” (Rephlex) 2. Monkeyshop “Niagara Flow” (Stilleben) 3. Brooks Red Tape (Soundslike)
4. Panash “Unicorn” (Atavisme) 5. Legowelt “Under The Panda Moon EP” (Crème Organization)
6. Dominik Eulberg Flora & Fauna (Traum) 7. A Visitor From Another Meaning “Hills Of Honolulu” (Viewlexx)
8. Raiders Of The Lost ARP 4 (Nature) 9. Sebastien Tellier “La Ritournelle” (Record Makers)