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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (196 ratings)

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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 don't 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 didn't. 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.

Caleb* - Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad / A Woman Of Distinction - 18-Sep-07 02:07 AM
One of the first uses of the wonderful 'phasing' effect on a record, pre-dating those famous sky-defying drum runs on "Itchycoo Park" by a couple of months. This 45 is totally drenched in it too, mirroring the stoned haziness and blissed-out confusion of the lyrics.

More famous for his collaborations with a certain Elton John, who is rumoured to play on this record, Caleb Quaye was apparently obsessed with Hendrix at the time and set out to produce his own psychedelic opus with this. It sold virtually nothing and received only one documented play on the airwaves - on Radio Scotland 242 where the DJ apparently played the B side accidentally. Reviews were also pretty lukewarm, with the anti-psychedelic Penny Valentine commenting in Disc and Music Echo that the vocalist should check his own singing before criticising anyone else.

The single languished in obscurity until it was picked up again in the early 80s by the Bam Caruso label on their 49 Minute Technicolour Dream compilation, with the B side appearing on The Psychedelic Snarl.

Araknofobia - Arachnophobia (I Want U) - 05-Sep-07 03:54 PM
A nice one - slithering hoover sounds, spacey short wave radio interference, robotic voiced pronouncements of the title, and a slightly threatening sampled voice repeating "I want you".

This one also pays tribute to the original 1967 psychedelic acid pioneers, sampling the reverse cymbal, snare hit and groovy flute interlude from "The madman running through the fields" by Dantalian's Chariot, along with the feedback/fuzz intro from The Electric Prunes' "I had too much to dream last night". A secret handshake and a knowing wink to an earlier hallucination generation.

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