A.R. Kane - i (2024 Remastered Vinyl)

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kane reissue collecLon is 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibiliLes over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing composiLons, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the arLsts sprawling pursuit of their own imaginaLons but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectaLons. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most propheLc and revelatory music of the enLre decade.