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Reviews & Discussion:
With the benefit of hindsight I can't agree with the comments about early UR stuff. Apart from The Final Frontier, which I think is still one of their best tracks, Nation to Nation and early James Pennington and Drexciya outings on UR a lot of the early releases were not quite so groundbreaking as their later work.
Initially they were influenced by the whole Rave phenomena of the period and 'hardcore' which the Techno pioneers disdained. Many of their early ep's owe as much to the sound of Essex or Utrecht as that of Detroit. Listen to their first LP 'Revolution For Change' on Network Records. UR hit their stride with World to World and since then almost everything they have done has been timeless.. 
Anton Corbijn has done better work than this. Check out his early videos for Depeche Mode on Strange. This is one long concept piece all shot on super 8 around the time of Music for the Masses.
There was a great urban myth when this first came out that some of the sheets which made up the covers for these were actual tabs. The idea of people eating their CD covers just in case has to be one of the great marketing campaigns of acid house....
A watershed LP of the 1990's and in electronic music generally. This is one of the first and still one of the best examples of Jungle Techno, now commonly referred to as Drum & Bass.
Gerald is perhaps best know for his UK house track Voodoo Ray and and maybe as the creative force behind early 808 State tracks like Pacific 202, but this is by far and away his most complete work to date. Immensly beautiful and powerful music which broke the mould of 4 to the floor dance music established by Disco and soared into completely new sonic realms. It realises Stockhausens 1950's dream of a music set free from time. Through the revolutionary use of timestretching these early Jungle pioneers realised that samplers weren't just for nicking pop riffs and 909 drum loops but could completely discard time signatures and match any two samples by stretching or compressing. No more need for pitched up rave vocals... If you check other Rave /proto-Jungle cuts from this period like 28 Gun Bad Boy you can see the development of a style that was something completey new, not just a fusion of Techno, Hip Hop and Reggae but something more than the sum of these parts. There are tracks on Black Secret Technology that are very much of the time like Cybergen and the fairly random Life Unfolds His Mystery but on the whole this is the most coherent exegesis of Jungle flow you could want from one of it's pioneering masters. If you want to hear what Drum and Bass could be listen to this. 
I first heard Slam play this track at the Sub club in Glasgow. The heat is like a wall coming in from the freezing wet Scottish winter. The soundsystem hits you in a maelstrom of percussive incisions.
then out of nowhere blairing sirens and a screaming preacher comes on like nothing short of the bomb squad, ripping through the sea of nutters stripped to the waste on the dancefloor, the ceiling drips sweat... "The time has come for each and every one of you to decide if you're a part of the problem... or a part of the solution...are you ready to testify? 
This represented an interesting turn in what is commonly referred to as dance music.
In the UK Acid House had come and gone in the late 80's to be surplanted by House, Italo House, Hip House, Garage, Techno, Rave, Bleep, Hardcore Techno and a myriad of other styles. It was a period of hyper intensity where almost every new record seemed to spin off into a whole new genre and the sense of a tangible developing artform both musically and technologically was iminent in the form of Jungle Techno. Yet here was Hardfloor releasing what could only be described as a retro acid house record, but one of such epic proportions that it was actually better than any other acid house record ever made, proving that sometimes you have to go back to the phuture... 
Proceed With a Visual Attack....
That break in the middle with the massive fat ambient pads has to be one of the defining moments of the rave period. One of the first tracks I can remember which pushed those buttons so shamelessly. I suppose it does sound dated because it was so widely copied but the memory of hearing that on a huge soundsystem is almost tangible. The percussion sounds are brilliant as well with a really metallic nasty electro beat reminiscent of MBM or similar 80's industrial electro. 
This came out at the peak of Techno's popularity in the UK and at that time was thought to be a fairly week cash-in compilation by React who were usually more into Nu-NRG / Hardhouse.
Looks impressive enough on the strength of who is on the track listing but the tracks aren't their best on the whole so it wouldn't be top of my list. There are far more seminal compilations out there if you want a snapshot check Techno The New Dance Sound of Detroit on 10 Records, Retro Techno : Detroit Definitive on Network, Relics on Buzz... | ||||
They were avant guarde but maintained pop sensibilities, experimented with industrial noise but always kept it danceable and clothed it all in the imagery of Marxism, post industrialism and S&M. What's more they were brilliant live.
For most of their early career, when the UK music scene festered around the re-releasing of rock on CD and playing charity at Live Aid, they were constantly lampooned and derided by most of music press. Yet they produced an LP every year of some of the most excellent and at the time the only new cutting edge electronic music available.
In 1987 they were interviewed with Derrick May citing them as a major influence in the Face Magazine. Something in music had changed forever...