Are IDM and Braindance too hard on your soul? C'mon, these days it's as easy as candy. We heard Alicia Keys is into it, but she is too scared to say it out loud.

The first time I heard of Bogdan Raczynski I was mad. It was sometime in the year 2000 when IDM was sizzling like crazy and I was just about to go and see Richard D. James, A.K.A. Aphex Twin, live. But the godfather of braindance bailed, and Rephlex, his legendary-and-still-to-this-day-kicking record label sent an obscure Polish replacement by the name of Bogdan Raczynski. Boy was I disappointed!

But, as most youngsters, I was an idiot. Bogdan preformed his ridiculously hyper music while hiding behind his laptops (literally hiding, he was sitting so low that no one could see him) and I just fell for his music – seriously, I'd never heard anything quite like him before that evening.

Today, his music isn't that strange, but back then it was as fresh as could be. Bogdan took the music of Autechre and Squarepusher to the absolute extreme. He turned up the BPMs, broke the beat into the tiniest pieces possible, threw in chopped voices and made the Aphex Twin's albums sound like the softest cuddly music available.

That's not to say Bogdan's music had no soul to it. He always mixed in some charming melodies or some breath taking child voices with the overall feel of lovely chaos or sweet mayhem.

As I said, with the years, Bogdan seemed to grow softer. It's not that he had changed that much – sure, he made a weird Polish folk album called "My Love I Love" – but that was only one release out of many. Also, a lot of artists, like for example Venetian Snares, started to do it even harder than him. But what really changed is well, us - the people of earth. What seemed to be insanely hardcore back in the day is just plain normal music today. Bogdan's new album, "Alright!" is the perfect example of this fact.

I don't know if I should say hip hop liners like "he is keeping it real" or "he'll never change, he's too stuck in his ways" but the fact is that Bogdan Raczynski's work in 2007 is not that far from what he did in 1999. Actually, it's magically the same!

"Alright!" possesses the familiar hard rave beats and broken samples that we always got from Bogdan. Don't get me wrong… I love how it brings me back to those perfect sounds that I used to enjoy so much back in the day – honestly, I can't find anything bad to say about this release.

What's weird is that if you'll put "Alright!" next to, let's say, "Boku Mo Wakaran", Bogdan's debut, you'll find that they are very similar. Still, when I heard "Boku" it felt almost revolutionary, and most people that walked by my room had some sort of a nasty remark that indicated that what I'm listening to isn't really music.

With "Alright!" the attitude of the environment has sure changed. When I played it at home, my girlfriend, who is usually into indie pop and some jumpy punk said: "what is this?! It's fun!" and when I listened to it here in the office it didn't seem to bother anyone.

So, as I said – we all changed, and it's only been seven years! Makes you wonder why pop music is getting simpler by the day, because as I see it, Britney and the girls should start covering Two Lone Swordsmen – there's no way it will bomb. It just can't.