Somewhat hyped up by Morbid Angel on their own website, this is nevertheless genuinely considered to be something of a classic in death metal history. I bought it shortly before making a sudden and swift transition from listening mostly to brutal guitar based music to hypnotic electronic music, and at the time never really listened to it. 10 years later, retrieving it along with other old metal stuff from a box back at my mum's house, I sold it along with a few other releases that didn't hold significant memories for me.

Some years later still, I've now revisited the album. It has, as stated on the band's website, "retained the venomous energy of its predecessor" - the excellent "Altars Of Madness". The highly effective Morbid Angel technique of layering furiously fast drums over (what seems like) slower, grinding guitars is here in abundance, creating a veritable onslaught of sound that evokes visions of dark armies marching. Here too are plenty of the wild, frenetic guitar leads that come from nowhere and end in the same place. The improved clarity in the production does the music plenty of favours, especially for the bass guitar. Although I remember being disappointed that David Vincent's vocals appeared to have dropped an octave (do growls have octaves?) when I first heard it, my better trained ears can now hear that it was more something missing in the mix of "Altars..." rather than something that had happened to his larynx between albums.

All that said, I can't help feeling this album and its reputation is something of a fraud. It's a collection of recycled ideas – to the point of actually having riffs and progressions I clearly recognise from other releases, from M.A. and others. Most shocking of all is a repeated verse in "Thy Kingdom Come", where Vincent's vocals match exactly the form and rhythm of a verse from "Maze Of Torment" on "Altars...".

It's a fairly unusual rhythm so it stands out clearly, and it's so similar I wonder why they didn't spot it and think "hey, we've done this before haven't we?". Then again, that's a question that should have been ask often, and long ago, in the sadly stuck-in-a-rut world of death metal. Like so many bands it seems Morbid Angel's most highly praised album is lacking the originality of their earlier work.

An artist with no discernible style, simply pouring his imagination into these limited CDr runs that he distributes largely by "stealth tactics" rather than any conventional means, his music is often harsh, noisy and difficult. At other times it makes me laugh with its absurdity, bizarre vocal punk nonsense within avant-garde divscapes. Then an almost ambient piece like "P.T.S.D." on "Camp Macho" comes along, and the Marrow is undoubtedly beautiful and peaceful.

I must have had "Forever Growing Troubles" and "Sweet Cigarettes" for a good year and a half before I ever listened to them, while having a clearout of CDs I never played. These certainly did not get thrown out! I was knocked sideways by what I heard, as I realised I'd ignored these excellent releases for too long. So inventive, and so in tune with the more experimental, random natured music I was listening to at the time. Racking my brains I vaguely recollected being handed the discs when giving my bag in to a cloakroom at a club. So fascinated was I by the bizarre, unpredictable, mental compositions on these CDs, that I felt compelled to track the artist down to find more. The internet bore no results, so I phoned the club I'd been at and fortunately the person who answered the phone knew who I was talking about and was able to put me in touch with Joff, the mastermind behind this ongoing experiment.

Seemingly devoid of any desire to actually promote his music, he prefers to freak unsuspecting people out as he did to me. If you're lucky enough to be handed one of these while out and about in London, or find one in your pocket with no memory of how it got there…don’t wait 18 months to listen to it. If it does nothing else for you, it'll scare away any unwanted house guests in minutes.

The "Ian Pooley Mix" of "Rok Da House" is the track that Jeff Mills immortalised on his amazing "Live At The Liquid Room" mix CD of 1995. It's testament to Mills' abilities at the time to shock a crowd into disbelief with his rapid-fire, hectic mixing style, that people have actually gone out and acquired this record off the back of that CD. Few other DJs could make such a boring track sound so good.

In truth, the few seconds that Mills forced into his set on that night in Tokyo are the only few worth listening to. The build up from the start of the track to the moment when the "raaaak da haaaaouse" vocal sample comes in is pretty nifty. But it's all downhill from there....and by that stage only 15% or so of the track has played!! After that it gets repetitive and annoying, with an awful breakdown and some bog standard "techno chords"....the same sounds over and over. BORING. Most DJs would probably end up playing too much of this track while preparing their next record. Mills made it exciting by keeping it short and sweet and focusing right on the small section that creates energy rather than the majority which drains it away.

The other two mixes are even worse. Some kind of hi-energy trance versions. Yuk.

A disappointing release, this.

OK...so the version of "Track" was the harder to find 12" version, but in my opinion it's not a patch on the version that was squeezed on the end of side A of the "Azimuth" album. The floating bleeps that accompanied the rushing Detroit techno chords made that version far superior, and it would have benefited from a nice loud 12" cut. Neither is "Chasers" one of Larkin's better tracks - although it's certainly not bad. If you've got those tracks already then unfortunately the exclusive track, "Dark Disco", is not worth buying the record for. It's a slow paced, very simple filtered-loop track that really could have been made by any dance music producer and shows none of the magical creativity that Larkin has been capable of.

I'm very glad for the series of Larkin represses that Rush Hour has gifted us with, but this particular instalment is far from being the pick of the bunch.

A fine pair of remixes here. The Rebreather version is a very spacious ambient interpretation of Monolake's original. That original was a jerky, mechanical sounding techno track that had an unusually (for Monolake) positive feel to it, almost even melodic at one point. Here it gains a melancholy and introspective vibe which peaks early with strings that follow the same melody that appeared towards the end of the original version. This could be the soundtrack to the experience of standing on top of a mountain, watching the clouds fly past underneath and around you. It develops more of a rhythmic feel in the second half but still retains that celestial feeling throughout. This is the track which really suffered from the pressing fault on the original run. I had bought a copy of the first pressing so was delighted when the Monolake office sent me a replacement copy free of charge.

On the flip, one of Robert Henke's occasional collaborative partners, Deadbeat, offers up a refreshingly different interpretation. The space is still there, but what carries this track along is the dynamic rhythm section rather than the atmospherics. Soft double-timed bass drums and understated dancehall style rhythms combine with some sub bass lines and the more mechanical and glitchy mid range. Once again that chord sequence from the original appears and carries the track on to a very well thought out peak, before fading back into space.

A brilliant EP of early trance and acidic techno from arguably the finest of Sweden's techno producers, Robert Leiner.

I remember Colin Dale playing the B side track week after week on his now legendary Outer Limits show on London's Kiss FM in the very early 1990s. I hassled Dale during one of his resident sets at the Knowledge techno night to find out where I could find a copy, and made a rare venture to Zoom Records in Camden where I bought this fine release. The A2 track is a pacey, dark and brooding techno track with bubbly growling synths throughout. Very hypnotic. The long track across the B side that initially led me to the record is an epic acidic trancey number, with a long intro that was sampled by F.S.O.L. for their "Cascade" release. Not so much my thing these days, but it still serves as a reminder of why trance seemed like a great thing at the time, before cheese and commerce took hold of it. The best track of all though is A1 which, unlike the other tracks which were remixed and released elsewhere, is only available on this record. Stuttered kicks, spacious reverbed claps, and rubbery acid synths. A spazzed out spacey acid trip, if ever there was one, it still gets an airing in my sets.

I became hooked on the Bitstream sound the first time I heard their amazing "Spatial Lobe" track on a DJ mix. It took some time to identify the artist and then track down all of their records as some of the early releases are very difficult to find these days. It's worth it though. Some of their scarcer material on Signal and Pylon made it onto the "One Third Standard Lux" retrospective CD on Modern Love.

I think that one of the reasons that Bitstream have such a unique sound to their tracks is they rarely if ever use any of the "traditional" sounds that permeate the electro genre. Outside of their very early material (the first two releases on Signal) you seldom hear any tracks dominated by TR-808 sounds, for example. Synthesised bleeps and blurps take the place of hi-hats, snares and bass drums. Where other artists roll out the same stereotypical analogue electro riffs, synth patches and structures, Bitstream obviously take time and care to produce something intricate and different, that stands out from the crowd.

There's no element of haste in Bitstream's release schedule. While I'd love them to release a record every month, these guys are accomplished proponents of the "quality, not quantity" philosophy.

This album still blows my mind 12 years after I bought it, upon hearing the wonderful "Le Soleil Et La Mer" on Colin Dale's Kiss FM radio show in 1993.

Everything about it, from the concepts to the artwork and ultimately the music, is so well thought out, crafted and presented. It contains everything that music has the power to hold...from raging noise to the utterly sublime, from transparent simplicity to swirling complexity, from floating ambience to forceful structure, from monotonous droning to brilliant melodies - all these elements in abundance, sometimes in the same tracks!!

It's also one of the few releases that contain lots of samples from sci-fi films without making the music sound cheesy. The whispered voice from "2010" announcing that "something wonderful" is about to happen - as heavenly beauty merges into a ferocious onslaught across "The Enlightenment" and "Event Horizon" - is perfectly placed. Likewise for the sample from "Abyss" ("there's something down there....something not us....not human") before one of the most unlikely tracks ever to contain whale-song stomps out across side C in the appropriately titled "Mosh". "THX-1138", surely the most sampled film of all time in electronic music, also makes an appearance, as "1642 Try 621" rolls into one of the darkest tracks to have emanated from the Global Communication camp.

As the title suggests, it's truly a narrative piece...each track telling a different tale and taking you on a different journey. The inclusion of a booklet with illustrations and actual stories to accompany some of the tracks was an aesthetic masterstroke, but I've rarely looked at it as for me the music is so perfect that it goes all the way to communicating its meaning through sound alone.

Possibly my favourite album of all time.

Kind of Detroit techno by-numbers over the A-side of Herr Pinnekamp’s Transmat release. I’m not too familiar with much of his work, and there is a lot of it, but what I’ve heard has varied widely in quality. Same here, then.

“November” is a typical rolling 313 synthy track. Shiny sounds, not doing much. Not unlike Transmat’s previous release, from Aril Brikha, in that it’s trying really quite hard to sound like Detroit techno, so hard they forgot to make it actually sound good as well.

“Being Quiet” is again a competent track, again lacking anything inspiring or original. Sounding very much like a take on early Stacey Pullen, with its jumpy snares and kick drums leaving it drifting in that area between house and techno, but not really confident enough in itself, so it’s a bit like a lost kid.

Why “Coming Full Circle” was released on a label with the pedigree of Transmat I can’t guess. I know that Derrick May has the odd dodgy disco filter moment when DJing, perhaps he thought this would go well at such a time. This is pointless and goes nowhere, except perhaps in the circles referred to in its title. How many tracks like this are there out there, disco samples looped over a kick drum? Far too many, and not one of them needs to be on this label, which could easily command the best of the best.

Finally, we are off the beaten track, taking “The Scenic Route”. It was worth it after all, as this track saves the record from being condemned to mediocrity. The track is lead from the start by a melodic line, played with a nicely modulating synth that makes it sound just a little bit ill. Soon, a bassline follows the lead note for note, and some soft piano chords heavily awash with reverb drift in the background, while more atmospheric synth sounds inject a heavily nostalgic vibe that really does make one feel that you’re going somewhere beautiful. The lead/bassline combo never goes away, keeping it familiar. There’s no pumping kick drum here, although a soft pulse does provide enough momentum to keep people swaying. A real pleasant surprise at the end of an otherwise dull record.

I waited a long, loooong time for the opportunity to play the full length of this version of "Obsidian", and finally in 2005 I was able to comfortably do so when I played a warm up slot at a big party. It was the first record of the night, so it was the long, gradual build up over a quarter of an hour that set the scene. I hesitate to call that track their masterpiece as P.W.O.G. produced so many tracks that might be as worthy of that description, but it's certainly up there with their best works. Building from almost nothing but a few quivering tones, the track is augmented by subtle rhythmic structures which give the track a very ritualistic, tribal feel. Timothy Leary gets a look in, samples of his voice scattered throughout. Subtle melodies float and dreamy synths swell and fall. Nothing happens suddenly. Not until the last couple of minutes does a soft kick drum appear, and to my mind that's the weakest part of the track. I think it could have done without it, or been done slightly differently. But it matters not; the track is still brilliant.

On the B-side, "Patience" and the Kala mix of "Challenge" are also excellent tracks. "Patience" is a strange one, with a swung rhythm that has a dragging feel to it and an odd modulating bassline that sounds very satisfying. The bassline becomes the prominent feature in this version of "Challenge", with string led melodies backing it up. None of the spacey synth sweeps, and not as far out as the original that appears on their debut album, but a strong track nonetheless.