Salt Tank - Ease The Pressure

Two versions of the same track on the A-side, with some commonly used samples and a fairly grating female vocal sample. Pretty basic early UK ravey house, nothing special, not even if you are into that sort of thing.

Then to the B-side, first track....what on earth is this? Sounds like a pile-up involving a convoy of ravers and some 6th form students who recorded their first attempts to play indie rock in their bedrooms; badly played guitars and, quite frankly, some of the worst male vocals I've ever heard. The lyrics don't sound much better, not that I can bring myself to listen to this enough times to work out exactly what they’re saying. Really, this reminds me of jokey attempts to emulate punk bands that a mate and I did with an old 4-track cassette recorder, except for the rattling drum loops and synths in the background - which combined with the guitars and vocals only serves to make this track sound extra bad. It climaxes with a horrifically out of tune "soulful" (at least I think that was the intent) wail from the vocalist, whose previously monotone whitterings are untreated throughout - with very unforgiving results. This almost sounds like the sound engineer at a dodgy early 90s UK festival combined the vocal feed from the folk-rock stage, the guitar feed from the indie stage and the main feed from the obligatory "dance tent"....and recorded the resulting mess.

Finally, side B, second track. Now, what's happened here? This is a version of the last track, right? Or even the original version? How did one come from the other? This is bliss! Here is that drum loop you heard in the background of the previous track, along with some of the synths you could hear alongside the horrible guitars and vocals. This time though, there's nothing to spoil it. This is an amazing deep techno track that just seems so out of place on this record. The drums are urgent and rolling, the atmospherics lush, the bassline trippy, deep and hypnotic. Blasts of acidic sound break the journey for half a second at a time and then you're lifted up again. Somewhere in the distance you hear voices, but this time they're angelic and in harmony, not telling you anything, just drawing you onto the beat like Sirens attracting ships onto dangerous rocks. It blows my mind that such a gem got parked on this record alongside what seems to be its bastard child, and its mediocre ravey cousins on the flip. Gorgeous.