Lego Feet ‎– Lego Feet

From http://www.skam.co.uk/

Legofeet
Due to the amount of death threats, begging letters, and ransom notes...
Ska001CD will be released on Vinyl.
Ska001LP will be available in around 8 weeks time.

This has got the be my favorite autechre record that I own, when I play it I still can't believe that this was released in 1991. Some amazing tracks on this: Futuristic bleep trax, IDM(before it even existed), Hip hop beat cut ups/loops, Industrial metallic like trax, and beautiful melodies even and all excellently put together as one whole track each side, like a continual fucked up mix. It has all the elements of when autechre sounded good, such as "Incanabula" or "Amber". 91 was a good year for bleep and hardcore as such, but this record is totally on a different level it doesn't even sound dated when played now. Twenty years and still fresh, in my top 10 for this holy grail of a record.

5/5

Mysterious, timeless and beautiful, this is one of the greatest record I ever heard in my life. I won't speak about speculations about this record since I listened to it for years without knowing it was Autechre, or even know who Autechre was, and how rare the record was, no; I was listening it as an anonymous author and I just speak about music : electronic acid-house-like mixed with sampling experiments, strange bitter and deep acid arpeggios with oldskool mc 202 bass grooves goes along with cold and noisy industrial souding break loops, or even chiptune sounding sick melodies, and, one of the most important point of the record : the track linking is so perfect, a f***ing amazing journey.

Autechre still are great, and I discovered later that Tri Repetae (or an other from this era) were not so far (more "Autechrian" than their first hardcore release, Cavity Job), but I don't think the Lego Feet miracle can be done again by anyone: it have the taste of a specific mood (UK?) at a specific time (1991), wich is over now. Still have the early 90's breakbeat / acid house sounding, but with a complexity level far deeper. An important point is that, 15 years after discovering it, it's still my favorite.

the reason a few turned up on ebay recently is because skam records are 10 years old this year and so decided to clear out their stock room, copies of legofeet were found and were bought up by people, some of whom quickly put them up on ebay, i was fortunate enough to get a copy myself (but won't be selling!). skam have said before that they have lots of copies of legofeet left, in an interview on radio 1 sometime ago the label creators claimed to have 'a box full' sitting in the skam store room somewhere, the reason being that it was their first release and though they tried to get record stores to take them, most wouldn't (skam being completely unheard of off course), therefore they were left still holding quite a few, they've just never bothered to get rid of the others since then as they've been involved in releasing new stuff. anyway, after hearing about the clear out i fully expected these left over copies to turn up, which they did. there's nothing 'mythical' about any of it, it's the fans that hype it up, not the label. as for the mask series, well czech republic is cheaper for vinyl pressing, and mask 100 and 200 were the only ones made by skam and MAS btw, 300 to 500 were skam only releases, apparently michael fakesch was not at all happy about this as skam never asked to use the mask name in future, so you could at least call them skam by nature for that little shenanigan.

Skam by Name... ska001 appears 5 times on ebay in one week! Wha'? Dunno, maybe its because Skam are to (re)release Legofeet towards the end of the year. Which is fine if you like squawky CD. Vinyl junkies think once, think twice, think three times before selling that appendage. I'm no fan of daytime TV but Jim's shennanigans in the Rockford Files have gotten me thinking... a few vinyl copies of Legofeet were given out in selected record shops many moons ago and it goes on to become one of the holy grails of 'tronica. OK, but as with other rare legends (No More Words, Prelude cd, Twoism et al.) there were more copies made than were claimed (the laws of diminishing returns demands that, especially when both of the labels involved were skint unknowns, plus why go all the way to the Czech Republic for a mere 1500 MASK pressings? eh? 100+200+300+400). The remaining copies were stashed away @ Skamchester central and some presumably with volk at MAS. Once the label starts to attract serious attention and budding skamsters want the back catalogue, Legofeet becomes (?is engineered as?) almost mythical, helped by rumours of there being only a few hundred, nay a few DOZEN copies in existence, and getting less by the week! Supposedly unavailable sealed copies were then swapped or given away for reciprocal favours and the outflow has steadily increased ever since. Copies are now beginning to show up fairly regularly with the certainty that a stacks is to be made on this legendary missing classic... and so Skam by Nature.
Thatcher would be proud of her children.
Home Recording is Killing Music.