Scanner - Sound for Spaces (Sub Rosa)

Las time I reviewed a Scanner LP I gave it 10/10. Not because I thought I'd discovered the future of music (as Thomas H Green suggested in his recent review of Neil Landstrumm), but because it was one of those LPs that we always strive to find in the shops - the sort that you have doubts about, bring back home anyway, but then turn out to love every single track. Is Scanner's new LP equally awesome? I can't give you the answer to that as this is not exactly a new LP. Sound for Spaces is a collection of Scanner's best unreleased works, running in reverse chronological order from 1997 back to 1984. There are certainly some brilliant tracks here - 'Documenta X' is the sort of ambient music that gives your bass bins some serious trouble.

The sleeve notes make for fascinating reading. Tracks from sound symposiums, ANAT (Australian Network for Art and Technology), the European Broadcasting Union and Video Positive 95 show just how active Robin Rimbaud has been outside of his album work. Although most of the pieces have been created with the public in mind, it's surprising how much personal feeling lay behind these tracks. 'Invisible Choirs' (ambience that sounds like a five minute root through the inner workings of an immense cathedral organ, complete with pulses of light and percussion bouncing around inside), for example is a very personal homage to a friend that passed away.

Compilations that run in reverse chronological order are rare but work really well. Another that springs to mind is Die Krupps' Past Forward. Especially as when you reach the end of this LP (or rather the beginning) you find that Scanners tracks from over ten years ago are well worth a listen. Call me retro but I still love the feel of randomised reel-to-reel tape loops. This compilation could actually be Scanner's most complete work to date. 8/10


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Various - Offering Vol. 2 (Studio K7)

This might be the coolest compilation you'll find for summer listening. The label that bought you the legendary X-Mix video compilations (now into their fifteenth year, believe it or not!), the Freestyle Files and Electro Boogieists from around the planet are back with more juice which, like the opener from Terranova, opens up a whole world of European drum & bass. The perfect summer cocktail.

Alongside archive tracks, Offering 2 showcases some new-found talents, like the band Khao, whose debut LP appeared on K7 last year. Their 'No Compromise' - featured here remixed by Smith & Mighty - sounds worryingly like a ruffed-up version of Culture Beat (seriously!) but fortunately their other contribution (a William Orbit meets Zion Train-style rant) is much more on the mark. As if to redeem themselves, Smith & Mighty turn in their own track - a rollicking 12" mix from the brilliant K7 imprint DJ Kicks series which has seen input from the likes of Stacey Pullen and Claude Young, who both went on to release stand-out albums on Elypsia last year.

There are some middle-of-the-road tracks, like Shantal's 'Tell Me Why Is It Oh So Hard To Be Oh So Lovely' and some tripped-out beats from Sample OS. But even these are worth checking out and keep you entranced enough to get into K7 stuff like Impulse's two contributions here - one of which is brilliant ('Wall of Pressure'), the other of which is awful ('Wall of Deceit')! 7/10

The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono (Rhino Records)

This has to be the ultimate evening-in for Lennon and Beatles heads. In fact, with over six hours of footage in this delicious new box set, it's more of a barricade yourself in the living room for a weekend scenario. In '70s heyday, the Mike Douglas Show was the talk show to be seen on. And for one week only he was joined every night by two special co-hosts: Mr & Mrs Lennon. Needless to say, they bought with them not only some classic (and little-heard) tracks to air, but also a weird assortment of guests, comedians, activists and fruitcakes from the seventies New York underground.

Did it really change the course of television history? Well John & Yoko put together a bill that even today would make pretty breakthrough viewing on prime time TV. Like student activist Ralph Nader, yippie Jerry Rubin, comedian George Carlin, a macrobiotic cook, a biofeedback therapist and various others. You'll also the art work of Yoko getting a platform - interactive and multimedia pieces which predated anything we have now by a good thirty years.

Oh and there's some pretty good music too. There's not enough room to list each and every rare performance you get to see. But on-stage antics with Chuck Berry (John's all-time hero), a film cameo from Andy Warhol and the Plastic Ono Band in full effect should be enough to get most bedroom rock historians' hearts beating.


This review also published in: The Times

Hell - Munich Machine (Disko B)

Munich Machine is the new LP from DJ Helmut Geier and sounds like US electro meeting the more curious edges of Deutsche technology. With Kraftwerk videos popping up regularly on MTV Europe's Chill Out Zone recently, perhaps the time is right for the Europeans to invade the more credible UK dancefloors as well as the cheesefloors.

Having released a staggering 30 singles across a 20 year DJ carrer, this is surprisingly only Hell's second album. Try it and you'll hear industrial beats mashed up with a power drill across camp Barry Manilow samples. Skip a track to find euro-vocoder narratives mixed with beats and pulses that sound more Detroit than Munich.

The style and presentation of Hell very much reminds me of Kirlian's brilliant debut LP of last year, also on the Disko B label. But Munich Machine sounds more like a danced up version of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals without the big sell out factor. The Kirlian and FLC similarities end with choice chunks of throbbing Germanic trance that compromise tracks like 'Suicide Commando' and 'Jack The House'. On the other hand 'Copa' and 'Warm Leatherette' (yes, a cover of the Grace Jones classic!) could be chart hits in the making. Stardust ('Music Sounds Better With You') has given fresh hope to the 97% of dance artists that do not have major label backing. DJ Hell: more please!

Various - Spunk Jazz (iLL)

Don't be mislead by the "Jazz" part of this album's title - this compilation is an explosive fusion of drum & bass and industrial (drill & bass?) that's mad, bad and dangerous to know.

'Hate Me', the opening track from Animals On Wheels, leaves nothing to the imagination. Carrying on from where Future Sound Of London ('We Have Explosive'-style) left off, 'Hate Me' brings to mind images of musicians creating tracks by propelling oil drums off the roof of a building onto the passing traffic. But that belies the immense precision in what sounds like Throbbing Gristle covering drum & bass (only a centipede could tap its feet to this...). If you can take the pace, this album is full of gems of an emerging breed of cut-up dance. Bubbah's Tuma, Value Ape impress and I want to see Hoarse Operator score the next Star Wars movie. Now that's what I call space-age.

The only mellow moments come from Milky Boy (on loan from Bovinyl) and Si Begg (one third of No Future with Christian Vogel and Neil Landstrumm). His 'You're On Your Own' brings things back into more chartered electronica territory. I'd love to find a club that spun this sort of vinyl, but for home listeners the CD version has the bonus of another mental cut Animals On Wheels. Also look out for Paddington Breaks, whose 'Wet Wang' is the first drill & bass classic. With 'Spunk Jazz' as the debut release from the new iLL label, this could be the beginning of a very disturbed life. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Bullet - The Hanged Man (DC Recordings)

The Hanged Man is a must for the sort of people who were into Trunk Records' Battle Of Bosworth remix album and Bungalow's recent reissue of the Peter-Thomas-Sound-Orchester's Space Patrol soundtrack. It's what the people at DC call a "connoisseur special". And what I call a very obscure - but ultimately supercool - rerelease of a 1975 Yorkshire TV thriller soundtrack. If this doesn't put you off then you're info a musical treat of rare grooves and street funk. Stuff that's appearing for the first time on CD having already been sampled by the likes of Jurassic 5 and the Street Smartz.

Although DC first got into the Hanged Man soundtrack from a second hand version they'd found for 20p, copies have been selling between US aficionados for upwards of $300 for some years. The opening theme portrays the Hanged Man exactly as he should be - Shaft in Yorkshire! With 'GBH', 'The Heist' and 'Blue Panther' you have the soundtrack to an imaginary visit from Huggy Bear into the wold of The Sweeny. Memories are made of this. 9/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Esthero - Breath From Another (Columbia)

In which 19-year old singer Esthero doubles up with fellow Canadian, producer Martin McKinney for eleven tracks that set out to combine just about every current style of dance music into one ever-evolving soup. Despite this description, Breath From Another is not some cheesy world-beat voyage, but more a short-wave surf into credible X Files territory. The title track is as poppy as they come, elsewhere (on 'Heaven Sent' and others), the pre-millenium female vocalist and male beat junky combination is highly Portishead and lightly Smoke City. More precisely, elements from Esthero are uncannily similar to Bristol's Easter Island art pop duo.

Can sonic Bond extravagances really combine with drum and bass and jazz samples to make a coherent full-length album? Well, ask Bjork for the answer to that one. A fine debut, Esthero lack the crazy edge of an equally mixed-up act like Koop, but come out sounding equally accomplished. 7/10


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Pablo's Eye - Everything She Wants Grows Blue (Swim)

It's rare to find A) an album that actually carries the sleeve note "use of headphones is recommended" and B) a new release from long-term sound collage artists Pablo's Eye. This new offering - yet more quality from the Swim label - is not a million miles away from the trio GOL, last spotted on China Records covering Art of Noise and sounding like a '90s 4AD version of Propaganda.

All tracks on Everything She Wants Grows Blue merge into one seamless chill out or rather chiller, some of the sounds are certainly mined from horror and high tension soundtrack material. But the finished product - ranging from soft drum & bass with sensitive female vocal narration ('The Episodic Nature of Life') to spooky ambient orchestricks with backwards vocals ('The Adjuster') is definitely worth checking out. Strange to note the inclusion of Celtic strings - proving to be the perfect accompaniment to post-club, post-dance beats. Stand-out tracks are the hypnotic 'A Sermon on the Radio' and 'That Night Together With Her' - which sum up all the albums good points in one five minute session. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Various - Lost In Space soundtrack (Epic)

What with Spawn, The Jackal and most recently Godzilla, US film soundtracks are becoming useful Best Of selectors of new and second-hand UK big beat tracks. Lost In Space is a little different in that, following Orbital's lead, it features some pieces of original dance score. This time the title track comes from Apollo 440, who turn in the rampage of the 'Lost In Space Theme'. More comic than cosmic but made for the silver screen and a track that should also translate well into everyday life with some decent remixes.

This soundtrack is also the one to get for a superb vocal excursion from Juno Reactor & The Creatures. Surely not THE Creatures in the throbbing techno environment? Fatboy Slim's 'Everybody Needs A 303' is another highlight, as is @440's mellow 'Will & Penny's Theme' and a track from Space with their ruffed-up dancefloor hats on. With only eight dance tracks, the CD also includes ten parts of the original motion picture score by Bruce Broughton. Less than attention-grabbing, but worth a listen for the Terminatoresque 'Spiders Attack'. Possibly the best of the summer's blockbuster soundtracks. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

The Egg - Travelator (China)

I've always shuddered at the thought of "dance bands that can actually play live", but The Egg can be forgiven just about anything after their demented debut LP of last year, Albumen. This year's offering carries on from where they left off, but because of the their dance viewpoint they've moved with the times. As a result you get tracks like 'Number Cruncher'. Ever wondered how blunted melodies (from the big beat vibe) sound against an acid jazz style funk jam? 'Number Cruncher' has the answer.
Travelator has much more variation than its predecessor. Like the live drum & bass skank of 'Bunmela' and 'Getting Away With It', which vocally is a full-on Brian Eno homage. All of these experiments with different styles certainly work well on plastic. And I'd love to hear tracks like 'Bunmela' pounding away from a live stage in a club.

Other experiments don't work as well. 'Willow' is full of brilliant melodies, classic Egg-style melodies in fact (if there is such a thing already). But whether it works performing them with a mix of drum & bass and classic strings & woodwind is another matter entirely!

Perhaps the continual experimentation is also The Egg's downfall on this LP. Whereas Albumen had a heads down, "let's play live and tape it!" feel, Travelator sounds altogether more prepared and measured. But the mixture is great. Totally refreshing and summery. 8/10


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World Standard - Country Gazette (Asphodel)

Don't be fooled by the country & western packaging and titles, the banjos on this LP are merely crackly samples mixed into bigger picture. This is on Asphodedel after all; wide-screen panoramas from the one of the few legendary US ambient labels. Country Gazette compiles 14 mostly very short tracks all of which follow very similar themes - old vinyl samples, banjos, wind sound effects and true grit. This strange concoction comes courtesy of Sohichiro Suziki and Haruomi Honsono, the latter of which was a founding father of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, the legendary Japanese experimentalist group that also spawned Ryuchi Sakamoto.

So imagine YMO being cut-and-pasted into an obscure cameo appearance in a legendary leftfield western like The Misfits and you'd have this album as the soundtrack. It's hypnotic and so perfectly produced that you can't help but listen to the whole thing, in one go, without pauses. It's one of those. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Pizzicato Five - Happy End of You (Matador)

Pizzicato Five's output just seems to get better. That said, this isn't exactly a P5 album... It was only a few months ago that I had the pleasure of reviewing Pizzicato Five's Happy End of The World on these very pages. Looking back, a 9/10 review was certainly generous, but it was one of those instant classics. Happy End Of You, on the other hand, is a remix album with new interpretations of almost all the tracks by a very diverse array of beat surgeons, many of which have been steadily leaked on promo for the past year.

As always with a remix album, the results are very, very varied. Some you'll love forever and others you'll want to instantly forget. Automator's mix of 'Love's Theme' is fresh and useful on the dancefloor. 808 State's track on the other hand adds nothing more than a percussive backing to an original that was best placed as a quirky end of night cheese theme, rather than a mid-night groove. Mixes from Daddy O, DJ Dara and John Oswald are great for 12"s but aren't going to set the world alight as album tracks. But it is interesting to hear bands like GusGus, the High Llamas and Saint Etienne in control - the latter's take on the P5 sound is exactly what you'd expect, but quality all the same. But final prizes should go to Momus ('Trailer Music') and Daniel Miller (working with Gareth Jones on 'The World Is Spinning at 45rpm') who both use their remixing might to completely rip up the originals but retain their original quirkiness. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Echo Park - The Revolution of Everyday Life (Lo Recordings)

Echo Park are a dark industrial drum & bass outfit about which I know little. But by listening to the grooves and some in depth sleeve note examinations reveal that this LP is the next logical step in one of 1998's emerging threads of dance music. It's the thread that began with the likes of Fridge (whose Ceefax debut is now slated for a re-release) and continued recently with album releases from UI and Family of God. Echo Park comprises Spykid (heavy on the "loops and scratches") and James Tye (providing more traditional guitars and basses input). They're joined by a veritable army of guitar semi-Gods (including Thurston Moore) all of whom are sampled and treated so as to blend seamlessly into the mix. It's a hypotnotic effect which, on tracks like 'Aum (Aum)' is like a nineties version of Robert Fripp's early Frippertronics and guitar noodlings. But other tracks like 'The Sound of Money' I just don't get - fragments of ideas are used and looped into something that lacks either winning melody or rhythmic depth. But this is only a temporary glitch - 'Razorkiss' fixes the latter problem while 'Air Victim' fixes the former. And 'Innocent X' totally rips things up, as a dance act that employ a 'fuzz bass' player should rightly do. Treat with caution. 6/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

808 State - 808:88:98 (ZTT)

I was incensed when Jonathan King once described Art of Noise's 'Close (To The Edit)' as "a medley of their hit", but that's exactly how the new mix of 808 State's 'Pacific State' sounds. Thankfully it's also here in its original form, kicking off a career retrospective that continues with probably the most accomplished dance record of the nineties, 'In Yer Face'. 808's 'The Only Rhyme That Bites' should have made MC Tunes a global star, but it wasn't to be. Forget the Dust Junkies - Tune's finest moment was with 808 on the era-defining 'Tunes Splits The Atom' - the only chart hit that's actually missing from this LP.

Fate then put a spanner in the works with the release of 'Lift', a track which fell far under par and seriously skewed the quality-expectation level of an 808 record. A real shame because after this point came their best - if completely overlooked - work: 'Plan 9', '10x10' and the Gorgeous album is by far the best (but least successful) 808 period.

On to 808's more recent work. 'Bombadin' (released more as a ZTT knee-jerk reaction to other, more impressive things going on at the time) and the three singles from the Don Solaris album certainly saw a new, mature direction, with guest vocals from James Dean Bradfield. But being mature never really suited 808 State. As this album proves, they are (were?) at the best when full of youthful energy and it's that they'll be remembered for. 7/10


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Various - Suite 98 (Bungalow)

Two years of Bungalow is reason enough to celebrate - and what better way than with this 13-track compilation of exclusive mixes and rare cuts of some of Europe's most outlandishly cool artistes? Set up by the duo otherwise known as Le Hammond Inferno (close French cousins of Saint Etienne and Pizzicato 5), Bungalow records has defined European lounge-core by releasing tracks by newcomers like Laila France and Momus alongside all time greats like the Peter Thomas Sound Orchester. But some of the newer bands have quickly reached instant - if not 'classic' acclaim - like DoB, who are here with a new remix of 'Au Revoir'. Another track with an instant air of Warholier-than-thou art house fun is Lailia France, who released a debut EP on Bungalow's 12"-only offshoot label, Pool last year. Check out 'M.F.R.F.M.' by Yoshinori Sunahara for a taste of Japanese "intelligent techno" (and find more on his brilliant debut LP, Crossover). Le Hammond Inferno also get involved with Fantastic Plastic Machine, follow up their recent eponymous album with a self-confessed 'Recycled Soft Rock Remix' of 'Laventure Fantastique''.

The only danger zone is the Pop Tarts and their contribution of adolescent Berlin guitar-rock. Not to be confused with Tommy Boy's legendary duo of camp dance pioneers, these particular Pop Tarts are the only dark corner of an otherwise perfectly furnished Bungalow. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

DJ Andy Smith - The Document (Go Beat)

The DJ as curator of a vast archive of 40 years of vinyl history is not a new concept. But Andy Smith's 15 track compilation is one of the first to physically embrace four decades of dance music and mix them into a cohesive and coherent journey-by-DJ. This is the sort of mix CD you might only expect from Portishead's live support DJ. What starts of in familiar territory (tracks by the Jungle Brothers and the James Gang) soon venture into a more historical vein - cue Barry White and Marvin Gaye. But that's nothing compared to the moments when Tom Jones and Peggy Lee (crooning 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay') slide in. But all this is just a give-away - the best way to experience this album is to go in blind and listen with ever raising eyebrows as the whole thing unfolds.

The Document is Definitely consigned to the Eclectic Selection file - and that's before S.L. Troopers merges into The Spencer Davis Group. So stop trying to get hold of bootleg copies of Andy Smith's increasingly bootlegged WFNX Boston radio session and go straight for this, a totally legit assimilation of 60/70/80/90s beats. 9/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine