Future Sound of London – Cascade (Virgin)

‘Cascade’ certainly represents a turning point in the career of Brian Dougans & Gary Cobain. In the years leading up to this 35-minute single they had experimented in numerous styles under a variety of pseudonyms. One of these, ‘Papua New Guinea’ released as Future Sound of London caught not only the imagination of the clubbing populous but also that of Virgin Records. So it was with some anticipation that ‘Cascade’ was released in 1993. Anticipation that is, mixed with a sizeable dose of bewilderment as other FSOL projects that year included remixes ranging from Inner City and the Shamen to the more extreme Bryan Ferry and Prefab Sprout.

When it finally appeared, ‘Cascade’ (parts 1-5) sounded nothing like what you might expect from a major-label follow-up to ‘Papua New Guinea’. The trancey backbeat, atmospheric ecstatic vocals and dub-thumpy basslines were pushed aside for Dougans and Cobain to present their most idiosyncratic, memorable and direction-defining work to date. All this and a tune you could hum! Heralding the arrival of the Lifeforms LP, five versions of the track made an album-length single (complete with longform video) that combined catchy, upbeat techno stabs with FSOL's trademark organic rumbling soundscapes. Listen to ‘Cascade’ to hear everything you need to know about Future Sound of London.

Ui - Lifelike (Southern)

This is far too loose and far too damn funky to be called fusion. But Ui do present a melting pot of real instruments, electronica vibes in a mixdown of phat beat-driven sound-lumps. Fresh from a collaboration with Stereoloab (the appropriately titled Uilab) and an essential re-release of their early EPs ('The Two Sided Sharpie'), Lifelike contains studio versions of new and live tracks going back over several years.

Ever wondered where the bass in drum & bass is? Most of it is lurking here - Ui are a trio, two of whom play bass. And that's the live, four string variety. Yes, despite bashing real drum skins and plucking four string doghouses, the production on Lifelike is so tight (claustrophobic even, in places), compressed and full of club sensibilities that many tracks could be mixed into a leftfield DJ set. 'Drive Until He Sleeps' and 'Blood In The Air' are prime examples. On the other hand, 'Undersided', 'Spilling' and 'The Fortunate One Knows No Anxiety' are garage of a more Beavis & Butthead rather than house nature.

But back to the good parts. Imagine the Red Hot Chillis demoing a track with Luke Vibert, or the Beastie Boys playing around with Fridge and you're half way there. Ui certainly prove that guitars and bass have a place in the warped outer reaches of 90s DJ culture. 6/10


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Various - Retrospective box set (Harthouse)

At last, a truly comprehensive guide to the influential German techno/trance label, Harthouse, as founded by one Sven Vath. With four double CDs each in excess of 75 minutes, this mammoth round-up of their early history is certainly exhaustive.

Speedy J and Hardfloor are the big name artists on offer here, with production coming from the equally seminal Luarent Garnier, David Holmes and of course Sven Vath. But what of the 35-or-so other tracks? These include the fat-and-frantic bass burblings of Arpegiators ('Freedom of Expression' and 'Discover Your Innerself' both stand out), the serene 'Plusation' by Trancepulsation (which turns out to be a secret guest-spot from European ambient guru Pete Namlook) and a seemingly infinite number of other magical moments, beats and breaks. In terms of new, less well-known names from the Harthouse vaults, check out Resistence D., Spicelab, Eternal Basment and Carl Lekebusch's mental Braincell project for some truly throbbing German techno and psychedelic trance.

All that from just Disc 1, so what of Disc 2? More of the same, which is either good news or bad depending on how into Harthaouse's hard house you are. But at the end of the day, this sound has always been more evolutionary than samey. Highlights on Discs 3 and 4 are Julika's brilliant hands-in-the-air epic 'MikeroBenics', Progressive Attack's 'Hypnoticharmony' and the dark soundtrack potential of 'Casablanca' by The Ambush. Retrospective is a rich, highly polished collection of the best of Europe's techno roots and is in many ways an essential archive release for your own personal vaults. 7/10


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Ultramarine - A User's Guide (New Electronica)

After looking set for big things at the start of the decade, Ultramarine have been mysteriously off the radar for the past two years. Thankfully the new A Users Guide puts them right back on the map with 10 felxible, mixable tracks. The whole album is based around colourful, bouncy analogue instrumentalism, which peaks in tracks such as 'Zombie', the more percussive 'Ambush' and the appropriately titled 'Surfacing'.

For a band that pioneered the real-intstruments-meets-808s and 303s scam, there's a human vibe that seems to be missing from most of this new offering. So I'm just thankful for squashiness and maluiabilty of the sounds and syniths from analogue heaven that are much in evidence. A User's Guide hovveres largely around 108bpm, but when the pace chills out we enter new territory and find tracks like 'On The Brink' (perfect jazz trip hop) and '4U Version', a second take on the more upbeat 'Sucker 4U'. Across the album you'll hear snatches and snippets of themes - some audible and others more hiddem - which leave you wandering "where did I hear that before?". Ultramarine certainly have a magpie-like approach to creating their soundscapes. But every influence taken on board is so processed and mashed up that a unique feel and style just pours out as a result. 7/10


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Various - Invisible Soundtracks Macro 2 (Leaf)

The last installment of Invisible Soundtracks was certainly a highllight of last year for fans of dark trip hop and minimalist beats. Like clockwork, a new compilation arrives oine year on but this time the IS series has a more international flavour. Artists from around the globe have been commissioned for soundtrack pieces for imaginary films which are stiched together here making a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Connouisseaurs of mellow vibes and the slow 'n' low regions of techno will be aware of several of the artists included here. Laika, Si Begg, To Rococo Rot and Fridge all put in an apearence. The best offering from these four big fish from a closely guarded backwater is definitely To Rococo Rot, who's Die Dinge Des Lebens is the only track on the album to be actually picked up for use in a forthcoming film. From the less well-known artists, Max Brennan stands out. His 'From The Temple To The Nile' is pure escapism - and a refreshing accoustic interlude. It's tracks like this that remind you how film soundtracks are more about emotion than any oter style of music. The steel cathedrals of Ian Eccles Smith's 'Driftnet' and the mixed up confusion of A Small Good Thing (whose Block was an overlooked highlight of 1997) are both well worth hearing. The films are invisible. These soundtracks are as real as it gets. 9/10


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Wax Doctor - Selected Works (R&S)

Who is the Wax Doctor? I wish I knew. I do know that this album is straight-and-to-the-point atmospheric funk, with a european air and all the 'sensibilities' of easy listening. Track one is instantly reminiscent of Curdoruy (but with a more programmed dancefloor direction). Pounding beats intro'd and outro'd with a shrill, dusky trumpet and jazz samples. Elsewhere, All I Need has some much needed vocal input, albeit threaded through as atmosphere into a track that takes a worrying five minutes to actually get off the ground. Others dont have this problem - thrree tracks in and the srum & bass betas are introduced to softcore effect. Imagine how an instrumental drum & bass De La Soul track might sound and you're half-way near 'Step'. 'Spectrum', on the other hand, keeps the beats uptempo, but has a much realer feel. With 'Heat', the signature atmospheric funk returns. Offshore Drift - the album's closer - combines all of the Wa Doctor's best moods and ideas into one velvet smooth piece of jazz jungle. 7/10


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Decal - Lo Lite (Ultramack)

Decal kept popping onto the decks last year as ones-to-watch with releases both on the Language and Leaf labels. Having supported such big-beat big-names as the Chemical Brothers and Leftfield, this duo are at the forefront of the rapidly expanding Dublin elecronica scene. As you'd expect, this is a ruffed-up album of blunted beats, but has an urban air and an accomplished calm that sets it apart from the plethora of other such 'bands' that are currently apperaring.

Various areas of beat and bass are actually explored here. 'Self Storage' and 'Snakehips' are relentless (but varied) big beat epics. 'Malk' and 'Pigeyes Gets Whacked' on the other hand are pure nineties-style electro. Decal also attempt some BPM variation with a couple of slower tracks, one of which works ('Zerostar'), the other of which ('Camoflage') doesn't.

Finally, with the album in its closing stages, some good old fashioned atmosphere is added to the scathing near-industrial beats. Something which is sadly lacking in much big beat and a major chunk of this LP. So thank goodness for 'Phunk City' and the album's finale, the freaky 'Iona'. 7/10


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Pee Gonzalez - Whuz The P? (Sub Rosa)

On Whuz The P?, Belgian producer Smimooz reworks and restyles tracks by hip hop activist Pee Gonzalez into a largely instrumental album of deliberately aggressive beats pulled from graffiti-styled vocals. The opener '13.11.73' (Pee's DOB?) shatters any preconceptions and pulls the listener firmly onto the side of in-yer-face Euro-style rap aggression, with an overall feel not a million miles away from the ground-breaking La Haine soundtrack. The title-track is a less brain-draining assault, settling back into a dark, percussive groove. Move swiftly to 'Tripp'n Trankill' and the whole affair is mellowing down nicely into a continental jazz jungle affair. 'Sozy Kaizer' (surely not a refernce to The Usual Suspects?!) and 'L'Abstract-Autor Du Vice' stay true to the originals by pulling in some of Pee's original vocals, but using them more as rhythmic samples than standard rap sessions.

This album definitely peaks in the middle with the tracks 'De Puta Madre On The Wheelz Of Steel' and 'Le Nine En Main'. But the closer - 'Sychobooz' makes the trawl through the second half well worth it, with the jazzy vibes being enhanced by a nice muted trumpet sample (previously explored on the track 'Strictly Bario Sound'). This is apparently the first album in a series of collaborations between Sub Rosa and 9mm Records - so stay tuned for more... 9/10


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Kirlian - Pleasure Yourself (Disko B)

The head honcho behind three New York record labels and resident at NY's Limelight club, Kirlian IS Carlos Abraham Duque. In Pleasure Yourself he serves up a streetwise tranche of Hispanic space-jazz trip-hop, which excels in percussive perfection, proving that house beats and bleeps are built to last. Tracks such as 'Porzellangasse' and 'Follow' bounce away at 160BPMs, all highly mixable, but in need of some colourful remix treatment to make them full main courses, rather than smooth, sweet desserts. An oasis in the middle of this pulsating madness comes in the form of from an altogether more human, sensitive slice of laid back, scratched-up trip hop: 'Mission'. That's a track which makes this LP worth seeking out on its merits alone. With a bizarre syth theme tune, 'Dysonsphere' (aptly subtitled 'An Example Of A Dumb Way To End An Album'!) and a full four minutes of answer-phone messages from techno celebrities clipped on as an appendage, this is the cheekiest futurist disco album since Deee-Lite's World Clique. 8/10


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The High Llamas - Cold and Bouncy (Alpaca)

As the High Llama's return with the follow-up to last year’s Hawaii, this is just the sort of thing you might expect from a band that have recently returned from touring the other side of the Atlantic with Stereolab. Picture Monty Python buffoons performing cocktail jazz with an electronica technician pondering away in the background and you have ‘The Sun Beats Down’. This and tracks such as ‘Tilting Windmills’ have an English vocal air that removes it from the realms of dance music and is much more reminiscent (very reminiscent, in fact) of screwball English poets XTC from their pseudo-psychedelic Skylarking era! But there are two sides to every story and tracks such as ‘HiBall Nova Scoptia’ and ‘Time’ on the other hand offer classic sixties-style themery and romance. The former being the sort that Corduroy used to specialise in before they made a video with Barbera Windsor, with the latter being particularly reminiscent of Stereolab's recent Dots & Loops excursion. As this album progresses, more elements and angles are included like the strange electronique meanderings of ‘Bouncy Glimmer’ and ‘Evergreen Vampo’. Cold & Bouncy is - as it sounds - a strangely compelling mixture. 7/10


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Robin Rimbaud - The Garden is Full Of Metal (Sub Rosa)

After just two minutes of The Garden is Full Of Metal, you know you're listening to a album that's bound together by an overall cohesion and energy which makes it difficult to press FFWD, not to mention STOP. This album is a shimmering, precision-science 45 minute piece of ambient homage to the recently deceased, much-missed and superbly innovative film maker Derek Jarman. It also sees Robin Rimbaud put his Scanner pseudonym to one side and prove that there's more to his music than the quirky telephone conversation samples, which the mainstream media have raved about, often overlooking the music with which they were interwoven.

A close friend of Jarman, Rimbaud provided the soundtrack for his film 'The Last of England'. He also recorded many of their private conversations and draws from these with samples layered across the album. The vocal snippets are manipulated in such a way as to be intriguing, captivating and at times touching. But the album works best when Scanner's deeply honed ambient musicianship comes into play. The second track, 'Experience' is a perfect example. This private homage to Jarman is taken one stage further with a 7 minute film, hidden away on a CD-Rom section of the album. 10/10


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Dark Magus - Night Watchman (Alphaphone)

It's so frustrating when your favourite artist has years and years of silence between albums, only to eventually reappear with something that shows how they lost the plot somewhere along the line. That's why artists like Richard H. Kirk put others to shame. The fact that he returns as Dark Magus literally months after his last album ( as Sandoz) gives the listener the chance to track his thought process and experiments in real time. Despite the moody moniker (one of his many guises), this album is actually a lighter affair, less doomey than the previous album. If the obscura cover artwok (courtesy of Designers Republic) is anything to go by it would appear that Night Watchman is a conceptual soundtrack from sunset (21:00.07) to sunrise (5:00.09). It's true that as time moves on and the tracks progress the beats get heavier and phatter. By track three, 'Solid' the mood has shifted to a thriving urban groove that eventually sweetens but is curtailed to make way for 'Nothing Has Been Said', a post-midnight piece that begins to suggest that all is not as it seems.

In 'Mami Wata' - one of the highlights of the album - Kirk returns briefly to his industrial roots, but any atmosphere this creates is caught out on the tripwire that is 'Arma Gideon'. Although this track uses some classic vocal samples (which are noticeable by their absence across the rest of the LP) they're backed by a groove that oscillates between the annoying and the plain silly! But this seems to be just a temporary lapse in quality, followed as it is with 'Ocean Spray'. This one takes a simpler, sparser approach to vibe creation. But the best is saved till last, both the high speed drum & space of 'Funk 48' which leads into the closer 'Plastic Paradise' prove that different tracks from this album are equally DJable in all forward-thinking club environments. This is truly a cathartic album, and perfectly illustrates that which anyone who's often conscious from dusk will dawn will already know: confusing, dark, distorted passages can be framed either end with moments of wonder. 7/10


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Moby - I Like To Score (Mute)

What with Concrete Records' Sentialement Votre, David Arnold's Bondage epics and even Black Dog's Bullit reversions, recent months have certainly seen overkill on the dance/theme tune crossover. And now Moby's in on the act with his first new album in some time, consisting entirely of his movie soundtrack contributions from past and present. I Like To Score is certainly a mixed bag, not least because of the older tracks thrown in and the fact that Moby claims he rarely goes to see films and that most of his movie music have been performed just for the huge paycheques on offer!

The most recent tracks certainly stand out. 'Novio' from the new Joel Silver flick Double Tap is a seminal opener and leads perfectly into the mellow introduction of Moby's new take on the classic 'James Bond Theme'. But as soon as the intro's over it's downhill. This is one classic theme that can't stand to be beaten up into the big beat style, with additional production from Depeche Mode's Alan Moulder and Mute's Daniel Miller removing any original subtleties. With other new Bond themes floating around from Pulp and even Sheryl Crow, the producers are beginning to look desperate. What they should have done was go straight to Grantby, whose John Barry-esque 'Timber' was a chill out highlight of last year.

Of the older tracks on offer, 'Go' - the track that sampled David Lynch's Twin Peaks and launched Moby on the international platform - never fails to impress. Way back before the Saint and countless other recent films began mining the rich veins of electronica to sell their soundtracks, 1992's Brad Pitt film Cool World featured the likes of FSOL, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and two tracks from the man himself. But bizarrely, the Moby-defining 'Next Is The E' has been ignored for this compilation in favour of the frankly annoying 'Ah Ah'. It hasn't dated at all well (but then I never liked it much at the time). More recently recorded soundtrack excerpts don't suffer as much at the hands of time as, since then, Moby has moved away from full on contemporary sounds to use much rock and guitar thrashing. Hence the inclusion of the Spanish musings of 'Nash' and a cover of Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades' from the Robert De Niro near-turkey 'Heat'.

I Like To Score is the perfect illustration of why I find a Moby album so infuriating. On one hand there's tracks I can't bear to listen to (the Mike Oldfield sound-alike yawnathon 'Love Theme', the hi-NRG 'Oil 1' and the aforementioned-mentioned 'Ah Ah'). But on the other hand there are brain-twistingly emotional anthems and ambient masterpieces ('God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters' from Heat 'Grace' from Space Water Onion and 'First Cool Hive' from Scream) that make me want to proclaim the genius of Moby from the rooftops. What's a reviewer to do? Maybe just ignore the bad bits rather than risk becoming schizophrenic? 9/10


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Negativland - IPSDESEPI (Seeland)

Listening to a Negativland album is something that everyone should experience at least once. Their best tracks are like listing to kids run riot in a candy store of media samples, where nothing is sacred. Taped conversations with corporate execs, the OJ Simpson trail, public service announcements and documentary TV are deftly mixed with MC Lyte, Ice-T and Burmese field recordings.

Negativland's little place in the musical history books is already assured, if only for having first coined the phrase "culture jamming" back in 1984 (when multimedia was a little known art-form) and later being sued by Island Records following a sampladelic art-prank on U2. But that was back in the days when U2 were sincere megalithic rock stars. Nowadays they're at pains to prove they listen to electronica, it's cool for everyone to use samples and the world has moved on. So where has that left Negativland?

The answer lies on this, their first LP for five years, a tongue-in-cheek exploration and full-blown degradation of one of the biggest threats to mankind. Not the bomb. Cola. IPSDESEPI is thirteen tracks of loops, snippets and snatches from multinational ad campaigns, all twisted and blended back into a concept album of cultural commentary. Even the title of the LP has a pseudo-dangerous air. IPSDESEPI is an anagram of the proper name of the album, which had to be held back due to copyright restrictions. To discover the true title, consumers are invited to call the band's 'Word Of Mouth' phone-line for the "correct spelling and pronunciation".

Although copyright liberation makes for intriguing (nay brilliant) packaging it's music that you pay for when you buy this disc. And musically this album alternates between the band's best and worst sides. Tracks such as 'Why Is This Commercial?' and 'A Most Successful Formula' succeeds on their key strength - taking vocal snippets and commercial blipverts and playing them like a furious percussive show-down. But unfortunately this is interspersed with second rate country-styled songs on the same themes of corporate monsters and consumer manipulation. 'The Greatest Taste Around', 'Happy Hero' and 'Drink It Up' are the worst offenders here. But the techno style far wins out and by the closing tracks this album is as addictive as the saccharine sweet world-wide brand that it sets out to lampoon. 8/10


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A Forest Mighty Black - Mellowdramatic (Compost)

This has certainly been a good year for Munich's Compost Records, with class freakbeat releases from Beanfield and the Future Sound of Jazz series. One of the bands you'll find on that series are Freiberg's A Forest Mighty Black, whose latest LP is perfect space age bachelor pad music. 'Duel With A So(u)l' and 'Tides' are typical of the band, pure Sunday afternoon funk for the beat(en) generation. It's drum and bass, but in most cases the bass comes courtesy of a jazzy double-bass sample and the drums are laid back smoky jazz room style and take second place to the thematic melodies. 'Everything' has a samba feel in places and spy-theme camp in others. A track that would be perfectly placed pouring out of some of the more switched on coffee bars around Europe.
AFMB's recent remix work for the likes of the Freakniks, Mindstore and the Far Out and 360degrees labels has poured more into their melting pot, like the analogue riff that underpins 'Duo Trippin'', a track which later ducks out into a sitar breakdown. Then there's the one-minute pure drum & bass burst of thought that is 'The 9 To 5 (Is Killing Me)'. How many of us can relate to that? In Mellowdramatic, A Forest Mighty Black serve up a rich, dark gateaux of texture and taste. And provide me with a pun I just couldn't help but put in print!
The closing tracks 'Rebirth' and 'Til The End' consolidate A Forest Mighty Black main-man Bern Kunz's vision of end-of millennium jazz. The future sound of jazz starts here. This is going to be a slightly difficult album to seek out but would be well worth the effort. 9/10


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alt.frequencies - Disco Moonlight (Worm Interface)

This is the latest in a series of compilations from the Worm Interface crew, a collective which spun off from London's one and only emporium of mellow vibes, Ambient Soho. Disco Moonlight consists of 11 tracks of quite variable minimalist electronica from the likes of Tom Jenkinson (a/k/a Squarepusher), Asphere and the ludicrously-monikered Farmers Manual. But despite the name of the shop, there's little for ambient traditionalists here. In places this compilation is more reminiscent of iLL Record's recent Spunk Jazz collection, if only for the intermittent gleeful use of heavily filtered drum loops, which distort time, beats and all left-side brain activity. In fact Milky Boy from Bovinyl records does put in an appearance on Disco Moonlight, his 'Toilet Seat' includes what sound like covert tapes of a friend talking about some very intriguing behaviour with the aforementioned piece of bathroom furniture! But 'System 4v.7' is that track that most people will head straight for as it's from Squarepusher, albeit under his less well-known name (to the public, anyway) of Tom Jenkinson. It's a dark, cinematic track with the vibe of a sequel to Passengers (Howie B/Eno/U2)'s Original Soundtracks Vol. 1 album.

Also worth a listen are 'Stochast' from San Francisco's Rook Valard - space music based around a pulse of ice-cool precision - and Baraki from Japan, who is featured here as a direct result of just dropping a tape off at Ambient Soho when he was visiting England on holiday. Baraki's 'Departure' is a fully-devolved industrial clonk epic that sounds more German than Japanese. But the pinnacle of Disco Moonlight is 'Stealth' by Survivors, about whom I know little - apart from the fact that this track was featured on an award-winning advert on Kiss TV. 'Stealth' is a potent mixture of eerie orchestricks across a pounding backbeat mixed with Chill Out-era KLF ambience. Definitely the highlight of the album. 7/10


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