Back around the turn of the millennium (don’t you love saying that?), some bright sparks with time and software on their hands discovered that running the second track of Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’ single through spectroscopic analysis produced an image of Richard D James’s patented grinning face. Chances are that they’ll attempt something similar with Rushup Edge, although it’s really not necessary. The Tuss may have been touted as Rephlex’s latest signings, either one Brian Tregaskin or a “dynamic duo discovered via intensive MySpace exploration by the A&R department”. But if Rushup Edge and previous EP ‘Confederation Trough’ don’t have the AFX fingerprint running mischievously through every sine wave, then I’m one of the parasol-dancing hoochies from the ‘Windowlicker’ video.

It could, of course, turn out that the whole Tuss persona is an elaborate, internet-bating double-bluff. If so, that’s one lucky obscure artist out there with a deal on James’s own label, a wheelbarrow-load of easily won publicity and a career playing DJ sets on sandpaper. Incidentally but not unconnectedly, ‘Tuss’ is either slang for prescription cough medicine (the Texan hip-hop drug of choice) or a Cornish term for what a lot of over-earnest electronica forum posters might be getting in their pants at the sound of all the above. Is that a limited 12” on radioactive imaginary-numbered white label vinyl in your pocket, or…oh.

Sounding so much like yourself that people can spot you in disguise might sound like a bit of a bad corner for an artist with a 15-year career built on finding new ways to tickle neurons with nimble digits to be in. But after 2001’s intriguing but oblique and ever-so-slightly-dour Drukqs, Rushup Edge continues the rededication to fast-paced, brain-bruising fun-fun-FUN! shown by the more recent Analords series of releases. There’s plenty of room for simplicity and repetition in music, but these six tracks reinvent themselves every few seconds, constantly refusing to get bored with one rhythm or melody. Every sound is fresh, as though each juicy synth wiggle and crisp beat were harvested from the circuit board in peak condition, Man from del Monte style. Each successive track piles on the layers, until ‘Death Fuck’ sweeps an avalanche through the speakers, leaving ‘Goodbye Rute’ in a realm of glacial relative calm.

Beyond that, I’m at a loss to describe tracks without blindly grabbing for Mixmag jargon or resorting to the timeworn ‘artist x on substance y in the presence of animal/vegetable/mineral z’. It’s braindance – that’s Rephlex’s own term. Acid funhouse. Analogue troublebath. Thrill ‘n’ bass…. Delectronica? Feckno? It’s Erik Satie kicking giant apple power-ups on the Streets of Rage soundtrack. Mr Blobby hypnotised by a glitterball on his Jungian therapist’s couch. Squeezy school paint bottles laughing at Jean-Michel Jarre’s laser show. A pocket calculator causing the universe to collapse as it tries to display a googolplex. A ruler twanging in eleven dimensions. The brains of thousands of Klaxons fans rebelling and bubbling away to form an acid-devouring Smiley Monster. Handclaps. Hiccups. That Brian Tregaskin’s got potential from a hilltop