Bogdan Raczynski - You're Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever (LP)

Bogdan Raczynski has always treated rhythm like a feral animal that’s somehow learnt a few manners, and that tension is exactly what makes You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever such a rush. The title reads like a dare, a cheeky motto for a lifer who cut his teeth on Rephlex in the late 90s and turned scattershot breakbeats into something oddly tender. Two decades on, he’s still finding strange poetry in chaos. The tempos lurch, the drums scuttle and splinter, and then a melody peeks through that feels as guileless as a childhood chant. It’s the contradiction that keeps you leaning in.

What hits first is velocity. These tracks lock into high gear within seconds, racing on a diet of shredded Amen breaks, clipped snares and little pipes of synth that wobble like jelly on a plate. But speed is only half the story. Bogdan is a notorious melodist, even if he hides it in cracked lacquer. Listen closely and you’ll hear bright, whistleable lines that could live inside a playground rhyme, then suddenly they get yanked sideways by a kick that sounds like a cupboard door slammed in a tiled kitchen. He loves that push and pull between sweetness and slapstick, between memory and mayhem.

There’s a warm, human pulse tucked in here too. The mid-album slowdowns offer a breather, and they’re lovely, all smudged pads, distant clatter and a sense of room tone that hints at small, real spaces rather than glossy studios. It’s easy to picture him hunched over a simple setup, arranging patterns in a tracker, nudging velocities by ear, letting accidents bloom. He has spoken for years about favouring simple tools and intuition over polish, and this record carries that spirit. The drums are intentionally scuffed, the bass sometimes blurts in a way that would give a mix engineer hives, but that rawness is a choice. It’s where the character lives.

If you know his early Rephlex run, you’ll recognise the prankster energy, though there’s less pure mischief and more empathy now. He still chops breaks into confetti, but he also lets quiet passages hang long enough to reshape your breathing. The contrast makes the blowups feel earned rather than just relentless. It’s rave memory reframed as intimate collage, with flashes of gabber kick fury one minute and the softest synth filigree the next. You could file it alongside drill and bass, breakcore, even some footwork-adjacent programming, but it really sits in that idiosyncratic Bogdan pocket, where the grin and the lump in the throat show up at the same time.

For a record with so much rhythmic whiplash, it also feels sequenced with care. The opener barrels out of the gate like a dog off the leash, the centre stretches into daydream, and the closer ties the knot with a tune you’ll find yourself humming on the tram home. It’s the sort of arc that makes you want to flip the platter and start again, which is exactly what you want from You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever vinyl. The physicality suits it, from the needle’s crackle on those quieter passages to the way the drum clusters pop when you nudge the volume a touch too far.

If you’re chasing Bogdan Raczynski vinyl, this one earns its space next to those late 90s firestarters. And if you’re new to his world, it’s a welcome entry point that shows the breadth of his thing in one go, that strange collision of hyperactive percussion and bare, almost naive melody. It’s easy to recommend to anyone who loves Aphex Twin’s more playful corners, or the skittery end of µ-Ziq, but Bogdan remains his own beast. Few artists can make a track that feels like a sugar hit and a diary entry at once.

We’ve been spinning a shop copy and it keeps drawing people over from the hip hop bins and the ambient corner alike. That cross-pollination makes sense. This album lives in the messy middle where genre lines go fuzzy and the human hand shows. If you’re in a Melbourne record store, ask for it by name, and if you’d rather buy Bogdan Raczynski records online, keep an eye on local sellers who ship fast across vinyl records Australia. Bogdan Raczynski albums on vinyl never hang around for long, and this one has that phone-a-friend quality that spreads by word of mouth. Throw it on, let it sprint, and see which half of you wins, the kid who wants to jump around the room or the adult who closes their eyes and smiles.