Mike Dred - Macrocosm

I remember once hearing about people totally losing it when they first heard 'Strings Of Life' by Rhythm Is Rhythm and claiming they weren't on drugs but felt completely spaced out and trippy. Idiots, I thought. How could that possibly ever happen?

Then one day I innocently bought a compilation called 'In Order To Dance 5'. I had heard of Biosphere and Dave Angel et al, but nothing prepared me for the first track. 'Macrocosm' was its name, it although it at first seemed totally out of tune and out of time with itself, it had one of those hypnotic, driving rhythms and drones of industrial synthesizers, to the extent that the nine minutes I listened through it became a blur of trancelike dancing and those colourful shapes you get when staring at one spot for too long. I was sweating buckets, moving to the truly addictive layers of sound and having an experience I cannot explain rationally.

When I came to the end of the track I was shocked to see how long time had past and actually felt as if I had been on a journey somewhere. I had returned a different person to the extent I adore that crazy sound of techno ever since. It seems those 'idiots' were right... You can have a trippy experience with music without being on drugs!

While the B-side track "Oxycute" is a bit more along the lines of Dred's work on Rephlex - very raw 606 & 707 drum sounds, chaotic sound of three or more 303s competing for attention - the A-side track "Macrocosm" is in a fairly different mould.

It's fair to say that "Macrocosm" is more slick, more sophisticated in its production, and to a lot of people (myself included) that should be a bad thing. But in fact the opposite is true. Mike Dred manages to imbue the track with an intensity that's irresistible, as it seems to build and build and build throughout even though no more layers are being added. The cliché of being "lost in the track" is an appropriate one here.