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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (372 ratings)

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Fire, The* - Father's Name Is Dad / Treacle Toffee World - 16-Feb-09 05:21 AM
Despite these tracks appearing on numerous psychedelic comps over the years, neither track can really be described as psychedelic. In fact they have much more in common with 66 era Who or even late 70s punk/power pop. The A side features sneering juvenile delinquent vocals over a punchy mod backing with an uber-catchy chorus over descending power chords. The B side is a in similar vein, just not as catchy.

While most of their contemporaries were getting heavy mimicking Cream and Hendrix, or plodding towards to a more blues based rootsier sound following the post-psychedelic comedown and the release of The Bands first LP, The Fire were honing a hard edged pop sound that their management ill-advisedly christened finky funky, or something equally ludicrous. Perhaps the fact that they were so out of step with the times explains why such a sure fire (sorry...) hit in any other era sold so few copies at the time, resulting in it becoming one of the most sought after and expensive 60s 45s.

Certainly Paul McCartney had high expectations and took so much interest in it (due to Apple publishing the tunes) that when he heard the initial run of demo copies, he demanded it be re-recorded with added harmony vocals and an extra guitar overdub to beef it up. Having heard both versions, I feel he probably should have left it well alone, as the subsequent withdrawal and re-release only served to kill off already very modest interest and the overall sound just became muddier.

The Fire went on to record a further (dreadful) 45 for Decca and a patchy LP for Pye, which sold about 3 copies.

Pretty Things, The - Defecting Grey / Mr. Evasion - 24-Dec-08 01:00 PM
Arguably the greatest and maddest UK psychedelic 45 of them all: 4 or 5 or maybe 6 zonked tunes welded deftly into an intense hallucinogenic roller coaster ride, with backwards sitars, fairground organs, pastoral trippiness and industrial strength corrosion fuzz blasts, all in the space of around 4 apocalyptic life-changing minutes. And the acid dazzled lyrics veer from playful to surreal to darkly disturbed without a batting a heavily stoned eyelid.

Grab this bastard on 45, or a comp, or even better, as a bonus on their sf Sorrow masterpiece and your life will be transformed.

Apollo 440 - Blackout - 16-Jul-08 03:05 AM
Judging by the ratings on this, a lot of people think Blackout is a piece of shit. Well, I dont agree, but maybe I just have shit taste.

While it was certainly too pop to get played out at the underground clubs at the time, I remember this blasting out of daytime wonderful Radio One like a dayglo premonition of the future. I even got excited enough to leave my squalid little den of the time and brave daylight and human interaction to spend my drug money on a copy.

One of the few rave tracks I know with live vocals and more of a song structure rather than a series of Techno builds and drops, I felt this would be a massive HIT and usher in an era of perfect pop/experimental crossover vocal rave. It wasn’t and didnt. Yet.

Fantastic Planet - Carry On Columbus - 26-Sep-07 02:37 PM
For those of you who haven’t grown up in the UK, “Carry On” films were a series of saucy comedies, relying almost entirely on sexual double-entendres for laughs. They peaked in the late 60s/ early 70s and died out some time later that decade. They are now seen as a British institution right alongside the Queen, rain and cricket.

So why on earth would the makers of “Carry on Columbus”, a ’92 revival of the franchise based around the life and times of Christopher Columbus, commission a hardcore rave tune as the theme? And if they wanted a slice of ecstasy drenched techno pop, why on earth did they go to Malcolm McLaren for it? Weren’t the Shamen home? It’s fair to assume therefore, that when they asked McLaren to do the theme, they were not expecting what they got – how could they use a full-on rave track as the theme for an historical comedy? I’ve never seen the film though, so I’m not even sure it got used. Was McLaren perpetrating another of his situationist/ pop-art jokes? Or was he simply carried away on a wave of genuine ecstasy euphoria?

The track got a limited release on double 12” and CD, and is pretty thin on the ground these days considering there’s absolutely zero demand for it. The music itself is actually pretty great for the most part - lots of non-sampled Alpha Juno mentasm mayhem and plenty of other neat rave production gimmicks. There’s a bit of cheese here and there, especially with the operatic vocal samples and shouts of “there she blows!” The MC rap that comes in towards the end is also pretty embarrassing and sounds painfully out of place here, although the Android Mix manages to go about 4 and ½ minutes before it comes in, so that’s the mix to play and an early fade-out is highly recommended.

Ascendant Masters - Put The Bassdrum On - 20-Sep-07 06:57 AM
"This information is channeled to you from The Ascendant Masters.... In the next ten years the world will undergo many changes....Citizens of Earth....Wake up!"

One of my favorite breakbeat hardcore tunes, this brims with confidence verging on arrogance, from the cocky name to the futuristic sounds contained in the grooves. Not only had The Ascendant Masters seen the future, they were generous enough to bring it to us mere mortals in vinyl form.

It’s actually a very complex track built on a fairly simple hard one note thudding bass line that keeps the rhythm as much as the beats, which vary from a lone kick drum to full-on breakbeat fury. There are dozens of vocal samples flying all over the place, all treated and chopped up in various ways, some sounding like gibbering insane Martians, others like wailing souls from hell. There’s also a fairly laid-back, almost disinterested voice repeating the title of the track every now and again, and what sound like elephants, trumpeting in time to the tune. You really need to play this one loud too, because there are all sorts of subtle spacey noises and effects shooting in and out of the mix.

Perhaps the strangest moment of all comes about three-quarters of the way in. It’s as if you’ve been listening to it in mono all through, and it suddenly changes to stereo for a few seconds – it’s a very weird, unsettling and shocking moment and still takes me by surprise every time.

Presumably pressed up in small quantities in order to hawk it around record companies, it was picked up by Telstar for inclusion on their Kaos Theory 2 compilation. It was not included on the vinyl version however, but was pressed up with 3 other tracks as a white label 12" DJ promo. The mix Telstar decided to use for all the releases was number 2, a shorter more condensed version of mix 1. Mix 3 takes out much of the bass and drums, emphasising the more ambient noises.

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