This is possibly the most diseased and unsettling disc in the Ex Libris back catalogue. Don’t play it to young children, especially the bit with the Voices.

Poor Graeme McClure. He had written a charming acoustic paean of optimism in the face of lost love, and then had the misfortune to turn the song over to the Nes Advantage Product_n W*rkshopp. Nes promptly took the piss by removing most of Graeme’s guitar, making delayed whale sounds in the background and adding on four minutes of ambient multi-layered noise, that has been proven to provoke incontinence in many of our more sensitive listeners.

Four mixes survive the ordeal. There’s the acoustic mix, which leaves the original song’s charming arrangement intact, perfect for the Radio 2 market. Then there’s the 7” mix, which adds piano, delayed guitar, bin lid drums, and all that carry on. The Vistian Cogel Me-Rix takes the song and deletes all reference points except the vocal. The listener is plunged into blank space; a bit like in that Star Trek episode where only half of Captain Kirk’s body is beamed up, leaving the rest of him trapped in hyperspace.

It is the 12” mix, however, that is the real challenge. Containing by far the most experimental four minutes in the Ex Libris canon, Nes have twisted a perfectly pleasant song into a wicked vision of static-driven apocalypse. It ends in a hail of feedback, Sigur Ros moaning and Terminator drums. It’s probably the best thing they’ve ever done. Are you up to it?