Pitchfork

The Unique 3 original was a 1989 "bleep" house track by a misnamed (there were originally four of 'em) pack of Sheffield hip-hoppers whose bass made a crater in the local rave scene. Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown, two breakdancing delinquents when "The Theme" originally dropped on their heads, prove that folks still sip syrup in slushy Sheffield on this new remix, pitching everything down until the already puckered low-end begins flanging and distorting into rhinoceros snorts. In fact, by the mid-way point it sounds like they're playing the grainy, muffled vinyl slab they originally lifted from Woolworths as teenagers. The bleeps sway with cotton-mouthed anxiety and the bass is the distant groan of worn and stressed grooves being brutalized by a cheap stylus. Booth and Brown pump the volume on the already eerie "Blue Monday"-on-whippets/poltergeist-choir synthesizers until they're the loudest part of the track, and by the end, "screwed house" seems like simultaneously an idea whose time has come and a potentially terrifying dancefloor mistake once the drugs kick in.

[from the forthcoming "The Theme" 7-inch and MP3 bundle; out June 4 on Fat! and available from bleep.com]