Due to an overwhelming demand, Ruxpin's "Where Do We Float From Here?" (originally released in 2009 on n5MD's digital imprint Enpeg Digital) is being rereleased on CD. Ruxpin is Icleandic electronic music composer Jonas Thor Gudmundsson and Where do We Float From Here? is his 6th long play. Gudmundsson has released on labels such as Uni:form Recordings, Elektrolux and Mikrolux, had many compilation appearances and has done many remixes for artists such as Mum and Worm is Green. Ruxpin's sound is firmly planted in the classic braindance subgenre of IDM. Although, there is an undeniably Icelandic twist to the music and enough emotion to fit within the n5MD emotional ethos. Where Do We Float From Here? is 16 tracks of finely tuned, well crafted electronica from a highly underrated artist.

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You can blind-buy the majority of the n5MD roster and confidently throw away your receipt—they’ve yet to put out a duff release, and this newest LP from Icelander Jonas Thor Gudmundsson does little to buck that trend. In fact it doesn’t buck it twice: the label first published Where Do We Float From Here? a year ago on their En:peg Digital catalogue, and are now sold on giving it the full physical honours. Ruxpin, to those who don’t know his work, is no teddy bear, and stays one step ahead of the snowblind overtures the world expects from his country. Perhaps too frumpy to fit the national stereotype, Where Do We Float From Here?—title aside—offers the same gentle jolt to preconceptions of Iceland as the volcano did that fucked everyone’s flights up. It’s still got all the crystal footsteps and dark snow you could hope for of an island country, but Ruxpin’s prowess with IDM beats means his fairy tales are a little more caustic, demanding a slightly stronger drug accompaniment. And that doesn’t mean just getting twice as stoned as you did for the first múm LP.

There’s enough ideas on Where… to make its sixteen tracks seem pregnant, and each four-minute brainstorm could easily spawn a little EP of its own. The gasping, the ambience, the lilting, and the compressed drones are each adjusted to push the electronic meteorology feel to the max, but Gudmundsson ensures that each suite stays crunchy, never quoting the easy way out on his layerings. Still retaining the techno acrobatics he’s clung to since 1999, Ruxpin sets up lightstorms as bustling as their titles, with numbers like “Underwater Playground (Starfishes are invited)” sounding like the Cocteau Twins with hiccups. The track’s garish Möbius strip makes for one of the album’s more brash moments, but it’s saved from the very real possibility of being a test-bed Nordic rap song by some cleverly employed bulb effects. The heavier moments like this get countered by weightless electro with a Tinkerbell twist: “We All Carry Our Ghost,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “She Danced The Waltz.” There’s plenty of them, and they all sound like the opening line of sonnets.

How Gudmundsson inches his way above the fog of left-field electronica is by stringing several of his tracks into movements, leading you in and out of sparkly tunnels. “Chasing Dandelions” is as valiant as M83 after a binge on John Hughes movies, its shuddering as calming as a dunk in the tub. It’s therefore the perfect set-up for “Those Angel Wings Look Comfortable” which rips you out so quick you’re almost breathless, the harsh IDM edges screaming “Everyone out of the pool.” The changeover is a stinger, but Ruxpin makes you fall for the powder snow and disco strobes before his four minutes are up. These sequences—there’s about four of them across the albums hour run time—are what heighten the occasions when the laser harp droplets and breakbeat snaps get too tangled, adding a philosophy to the more estranged piano experiments/melancholy glitching. His best moment, though, is arguably his calmest: after the soundtrack-to-Commando clone of “A Sunrise (and They Turned into Stones),” Gudmundsson fades out with “Now I Turn To You”; a sumptuous galaxy that’s pudding-sweet, the planets just glacé cherries. While much of Where…‘s ultimate pacing might mean it’s less emotive than the n5MD median, tracks like these raise the bar, hopefully hinting that Ruxpin’s seventh release will be an EP so starry it can blind an astrologist. That’ll teach them to go stargazing in Iceland textura

Poppy in tone and blissfull in synthetic spirit, Ruxpin's Where Do We Float From Here? harks back to the golden age of IDM and does so without apology. Jonas Thor Gudmundsson's sixth Ruxpin full-length clearly shows the love the Icelandic electronic composer has for the era, and apparently the love is shared by others too, given that the release first appeared on n5MD's digital imprint Enpeg Digital in 2009 but proved so popular n5MD decided to give it a physical release on the parent label too. That the tracks ooze polish doesn't surprise, as Gudmundsson's been refining his craft for years with releases on labels such as Uni:form Recordings, Elektrolux, and Mikrolux. What does surprise is the album's dual personality, with the first half's mellow vibe in stark contrast to the rambunctious spirit that infuses the second.

Not a cover of The Beatles song, “I Saw Her Standing There” serves instead as a luscious entrée to the fifty-five-minute collection. Faint echoes of drum'n'bass form the backbone to “Her Body Smells of Cinnamon,” and track after track of swoon-inducing blends of crystalline synth melodies and hyperactive breakbeats follows. “Where the Wild Things Are” captures the carefree abandon and innocent joy so memorably captured by the Maurice Sendak classic, and song titles alone (e.g., “Chasing Dandelions,” “She Played This Song for Me When I Was Five”) convey the music's child-like joy. It's not all sweetness and light, however, as the material hits harder during the album's second half: Gudmundsson sneaks a smattering of acid into “I Noticed You Hovering Above Me” and dives so deep down the acid rabbit hole during the tripped-out “Underwater Playground (Starfishes Are Invited)” the track could pass for something by Luke Vibert under his Wagon Christ or Kerrier District aliases. Squiggly synthetics and breakbeats likewise kick up serious dust in “A Sunrise (and They Turned into Stones)” before the stately closer “Now I Turn To You” reinstates the becalmed splendour of the earlier songs. Gudmundsson's richly arranged set-pieces for pianos, synthesizers, and electronic beats don't break new ground necessarily but Where Do We Float From Here? charms nevertheless on purely musical grounds.

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