I recently had the unfortunate experience of reading, for the first time, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, 1984. Why "unfortunate?" Well, this transpired after CBS's reality TV flop, "Big Brother," began airing. So every time I saw the words "Big Brother," I had to fight myself not to think of the manipulative stripper, the wicked cool guy with one leg, or the out-of-touch fat man. And even though I knew the final line before reading the book, I still couldn't feel its force as I would have just six months ago. "He loved Big Brother?" I hated it!

I nonetheless managed to absorb the book. Perhaps its most obvious point is that, by forcing humans into a world in which the work machine is life-- all other distractions having been removed in order to maximize the man-machine's efficiency-- the human spirit can be broken, but not before giving up a fight (this is the Hallmark version). Datach'i-- aka Joseph Fraoli-- manages a similar, if less powerful, statement on his sophomore release. Even the title suggests a conditioned human response, robotically delivered: We Are Always Well Thank You.

But while the work machine is proverbial in 1984, on We Are Always Well Thank You, it is truly a machine in which Datach'i works. This isn't the sound of a man toying with a machine to elicit the desired response; instead, it's a man trapped in a machine who, in trying to break out, fights the machine, causing its beat to skip, speed up, slow down. The continuity of its production is constantly disturbed, but it produces nonetheless. And Datach'i remains caught within.

Yes, Datach'i is drill-n-bass, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), or the less-sophisticated genre title: mind-fucking. The album opens with "Free in a Box," which juxtaposes alternately tinny and booming drums with portentous, resonant whirs. And the frenetic beat, of course, never remains the same; showing a refreshing disregard for consistency, Datach'i tweaks and tweaks and tweaks the tempo until it sounds normal, whereupon a very twisted structure appears amidst the confusion.

Like Aphex Twin circa The Richard D. James Album, Datach'i applies this formula throughout most of the album without ever sounding repetitive. On "We Merrily Roll Along," the simply overlaid synth tones sound cheesy at first, but by the track's end, they've become genuinely warm. "Uma is Dead," with its touching, though unnerving, piano, is the most distressing musical eulogy I've ever heard. And numbers like the title track and "Cold Shift" achieve a machined ethereality almost as compelling as Aphex's "Girl/Boy Song."

Datach'i occasionally slips into the childishness usually reserved for artists on the Rephlex Records label-- the fuzzy chanting of distorted digital munchkins on "Welcome to the Jackalope," for instance, or the circus-like electronic accordion that ends the album. And there are Windham Hill-esque piano tunes, falling rain, and violins that seem very out of place. But these are only minor flaws-- the sounds of the human spirit after having broken through completely is not what one wants to hear. I want to hear the struggle, and then man sensing the futility of his efforts to escape. That's when the expression of the human spirit is most poignant.

-Ryan Kearney