It’s easy to miss the gem that is Float. Aes’ sophomore LP was released in 2000 on then-young label Mush, just one year prior to Labor Days. It’s never gotten the acclaim of its younger sibling. At that time, Mush existed as an outlet for instrumental electronic odd and ends. The most notable artist on the label at that time was avant-garde kinda-hip-hop outfit cLOUDDEAD, next to whom Aes seems like a positively normal emcee. Float lives up to the rest of the Mush roster at the time — its production teems with nervous ambition, such as the degenerating free-jazz horns that close “Prosperity.” On Float, Blockhead’s instrumental breaks provide much-needed moments of serenity. Their collaboration appears to have been fruitful from the start, because there’s enough variety on the album that it’s difficult to take in a single sitting (the hour-plus runtime doesn’t help). While Blockhead’s arrangements on Float don’t always play nice with one another or with Aes’ flow, they consistently give him something interesting to work with. Aesop’s attack methodology grew astronomically between his debut and his sophomore LP. Really, Float is the first record where Aes sounds at home in his own skin. Lead single “Big Bang” is the first example of the twitchy trigger finger approach that is his signature. As a character, though, Float shows a more paranoid Aes than before or since. The best songs on Float, like the TV-hating “Basic Cable,” and the observational “6B Panorama” portray him as a highly-critical outsider — maybe that’s what drew El-P, a notable cynic in his own right, to sign him in the first place. The whole record sounds more anxious than his more assured later work, which makes for an exciting listen. That anxiety probably stemmed from Aes himself, who filled the record’s liner notes with fragmented sentences describing each song’s inspiration in detail. In fact, he suffered a nervous breakdown not long after Float hit the streets.