Various – Frankfurt Trax Volume 3 (The House Of Phuture)

This compilation is a fantastic overview of where PCP were in 1992 - namely well ahead of their time. That much is apparent even with hindsight - I can only imagine how revolutionary this sounded at the time. There's hoover-stuffed rave anthems in "Ey Loco" and "9 is a Classic", and darker, more twisted tunes like "World Famous MF", and the truly demented "Disaster Area" - those pitched down stabs at the start of that still sound like little else all these years later.

Many of these tunes were released as part of EPs on PCP labels, but some are exclusive to this album - notably, "2nd Coming", which is somehow a darker follow-up to "We Have Arrived". But the exclusive track which is my favourite - and worth the price alone - is "Murder One" by Killer Loops. This was a long-standing mystery ID for many years for me - a classic 1992 breakbeat hardcore track with a gigantic rave stab riff and the "up up in the sky" vocal as used by Ilsa Gold. Doesn't sound like many other PCP tracks, but at the same time it has that classic combination of darkness, simplicity and total rave armageddon. When this came out, the UK breakbeat scene was itself beginning to shift towards the darkside, and so it's a shame there weren't more PCP releases in this vein (aside from the excellent White Breaks series).

Anyway, great album - but absolutely worth picking up just for "Murder One". (And despite 3 tracks per side still sounds pretty good!)