Whenever I get an album in the mail, I immediately look at the back cover. First, I check the record label. Then, I read the other fine print. Upon inspecting Ovuca's Onclements, one line, in particular, struck me. It read, in the fine tradition of Rephlex releases, "File under 'Braindance.'" To ensure that the reader understands the meaning behind this, an explanatory drawing of a brain connected to a foot appears below the text.

So, I put on my headphones and press play, thinking about the braindance, and whether it actually means anything at all. "In a way, isn't all music braindance?" I ask myself. My response is an affirmative, "Ye--." Wait, what's going on here? My thalamus is beginning to worry about this ominous sound, which builds like an approaching electrical storm. Now my medulla oblongata knows about it. My breathing and heartbeat are slowing. A man speaks. "Record, man," he orders. "Record!" He dances around an empty room. Or around my head. I'm not sure which.

Ahh, that's better. A simple, yet addictive beat arises out of the confusion. But before my pulse can return to normal, a man (the same one?) says, "Oopsidaises, oopsidaises," his pitch alternately rising and falling on the last syllable. Now it's being looped. The pitch and tempo receive even more electronic doctoring. Barely audible spurts of maniacal guffaws are buried throughout. The man groans as if stricken with gonorrhea.

My thalamus isn't sure if it should initiate laughter or tears. Then everything halts and there is silence. He's reloading. I see him grab some pellets, drop them in the barrel, plunge his musket. Ready, aim, jazz. A jazz interlude. My brain is relaxed, but skeptical. This is tea on a battlefield. Sure enough, the table upends and I'm caught off guard once again. A full-on, distorted drill-n-bass onslaught ensues. Lo-fi bleeps drop like cannonballs. A man lost amid the chaos either laughs or screams. Or both.

Thalamus instincts take over: I remove the headphones to save myself. But my masochistic hypothalamus wants more. It overrides the thalamus and my brain reaps the rewards of conscious decision-making. A tidal organ washes over fuzzy breaks. My brain and I are swimming. But how foolish we've been. The track soon ends and we're too deep to rise for air. A baby laughs at us, but it's not cute baby laughter. Have you seen Shallow Grave? This baby's head turns 360 degrees.

My medulla oblongata's busy again, pushing my heart to the brink of explosion. The baby's laughter has reversed, now accompanied by a haunting organ. The erratic ride continues. With reverberated clacks and teardrops, calming synthesizers, and reassuring, soft cymbal splashes, homeostasis slowly returns to normal. Then, a beautiful song called, of all things, "Yakface," arises from murky depths. Never before have de-tuned chords coupled with Nintendo effects sounded so organic.

But you know what happens next: after a hypnotizing piano interlude-- suspiciously reminiscent of Hive's Working with Sound-- turntable scratching fires off metal like a machine gun. Then, ambient keyboards and back again. The 72-minute disc eventually ends with a subdued piano ballad. (Um, okay.) Taken to the point of seizure at least a dozen times, my cerebrum is shuddering. On to disc two.

Similarly erratic, "Part 2" gets the hypothalamus working again. Blood pressure and body temperature are back on the rise. Sex drive is disabled. Pain, pleasure, and hunger sing together in a swirling chorus of overstimulation. But now, the primate cortex is getting into the act. After hearing the self-defeating piano regressions of "Crystal Cupboard," my brain thinks, "This certainly puts Moby to shame." Then, the piano speeds up beyond recognition, and it seems a 100-piece orchestra is playing a soundtrack to the crashing of every programmers' computer code, all at once.

My cerebellum has sent me staggering to the floor. I try prying my headphones off, but I poke myself in the eye. Darkness.

I awaken to three minutes of pleasant flute, guitar, drums, and a man humming. So simple. Then, a woman sings in a voice that, while neither natural nor textbook, is amateurishly beautiful. I can hear an argument in the background, but all chaos has lost its impact: the myelinated nerve fibres of my inner cortex have numbed. All I hear is beauty. I allow the music and subsequent silence to massage the wrinkled folds of my outer cortex. I may not want to hear this again for at least a few weeks, but I think my brain just danced.

-Ryan Kearney