My Red Hot Car (wait — 2001, skip)

Squarepusher's "Beep Street" opens with the gentle disorientation of a synth line that sounds like a toy piano dreaming — bright, short-decay notes arranged in a pattern that hovers between childlike and uncanny. Underneath, Tom Jenkinson's bass guitar enters with the kind of fluid, jazz-informed phrasing that sets him apart from every other IDM producer of the era: melodic intelligence married to technical virtuosity, the bass doing conversational work rather than just anchoring the low end. The drum programming is intricate and hyperactive, drill and bass patterns that fragment and reassemble without ever fully losing a groove. Emotionally the track occupies an odd, charming space — playful but slightly strange, like a music box found in an abandoned house that still works perfectly. There's a melancholy baked into the prettiness, a sense of smallness and sweetness against an implied larger darkness. It belongs to the 1997 IDM moment when producers like Jenkinson were pushing electronic music toward a kind of virtuosic eclecticism that defied genre entirely. You'd put this on during late-night creative work, or in the hour before a city wakes up — music that rewards close listening without demanding it.