During the long wait between their seminal album Frequencies and the recently released Advance, fans of U.K. dance pioneers LFO in 1994 found comfort in two remarkable 12-inches by one half of the renowned duo, operating under the name SPEED JACK. MARK BE LL, who together with his colleague Jez Varley spent 5 years of hibernation (to do a Stone Roses, as it has become known in record industry circles), in his alternative guise delivered the skullsplitting robo-techno blueprints Storm and C.T.C. on the Belg ian R and S label. Later both tracks ended up on the fifth volume of In Order To Dance, a downright token of their elevation to the status of classic dance cuts.

Now Jack The Lad is back with an albumful of grand techno that takes the essence of those first two landmarks even further. Surge, which is preceded by the single Blue Bossa, should make his peers turn green with envy - some connaisseurs even claim the w ork is easily more impressive than the latest LFO collection, and who are we to contradict them? From uncompromising dancefloor charges to spine-tingling, electro-fed rhythmscapes, Surge has it all. Even two tracks co-written with Robert Leiner, a.k.a. Th e Source Experience, and a previously unreleased remix of Storm. Now that is what we call techno... (1996)