The marketing guys of yer average modern megaconglomerate love to talk about something called brand equity. They wring their thin, pale little hands and devise new and interesting ways to separate us from our money before our competitors do. Brand equity is business- speak for the nebulous feeling that consumers get when they buy/ eat/ smell/ hear/ watch a product. It's a vague representation for the idea that people will buy a product if they think it's good, even if it ain't.

Looking around, I see more than a few companies resting on their brand equity laurels. Perceived value is almost as good at the bank these days as real cash, but when it comes to music, brand equity stops here, with your Pitchfork reviewer. We don't get no money, so you can rest easy that we're not only unbiased, but also completely disinterested in the careers of the artists we review. For example, I'm not afraid to tell you now that after six months of Coca-Cola addiction, my eyes looked like pissholes in the snow, my skin was a pale shade of yellow, and I lost all feeling in my testicles. Has Pepsi sponsored me? No, I just tells it like it is, kidz.

Which brings me to Coldcut's Let Us Replay!. I am pleased to announce that Coldcut has built up a brand equity among both my peers and myself that is almost unmatched among electroids. Since their release of 1989's critically lauded and just plain phat What's That Noise?, then 1997's Let Us Play!, not to mention the barrage of remix discs (Timber, More Beats + Pieces and Boot The System/ Atomic Moog 2000), they have consistently generated groundbreaking and just plain cool toonz for the electrically eclectic. Let Us Replay! is no exception. Germinated from the seeds of Let Us Play!, Let Us Replay! is so much more than yer standard remix disc that I hesitate to mention the connection here. However, the Coldcut- initiated will indeed recognize "Atomic Moog 2000," "Panopticon," "More Beats + Pieces" and others, if in name only, for these trax recall their predecessors like a whiff of smoke recalls a cigarette.

And the names! Oh, the names! I feel myself moistening as I look over the tracklist! Mmmmoooohh. Did you say DJ Food, Grandmaster Flash, Silent Poets, Irresistible Force and Carl Craig? Hell yessits! Not to mention the introduction of new(ish) tracks "Last Night A Cliche Saved My Life," "Border" and "The Tale of Miss Virginia Epitome," which features Salina Saliva telling a grizzly tale of re-grown hymens. All in all, Let Us Replay! makes the grade, and then some, including a demo disc (for free) of Coldcut's new video/ audio editing software! Now that's value! Brand equity, kids! Moore & Black, the jammers, the rippers, the mixmasters, they rule! Brand equity!

-James P. Wisdom