A few posts ago I put up the total rave banger "Mayhem" by Full On Sound, a very European sounding track (Germany, Belgium?) - but actually it was by two English lads - Morgan King and Nick Hook (Nick E.). They were quite good at doing early 90s style German techno, another of their aliases was Bassrace (and that appeared on the first Techno Trax compilation, a very influential double pack of vinyl for me). Well it seems a few years later, the two guys had done a 180 degree turn and headed down the progressive road. Nick in particular was an important player in the progressive scene early on, playing a big role in English labels OM and Whoop. As far as I know, he's still at it.
But this track is by Morgan King - who I believe dropped out from dance music not long after its initial release in 1991 (around the same time and on the same label as Mayhem) - and it's more of a classic than anything Nick Hook has put out. Many of you will know it from various Sasha and Digweed DJ mixes, but I'm only presenting the Slam/Soma mixes here. The 9 minute Soma Mix is the pick of the pack, quite slow and I used to pitch it up quite a lot. Don't think I'd debase it like that nowadays.
I don't really like any of the vocal versions (or the Leftfield ones either), so you'll have to look elsewhere for those...
Discogs
A1 I Am Free (Soma Mix)
A2 I Am Free (Slam Mix)
Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire
Gaston Steenkist and Alex Dijksterhuis (better known as Dobre & Jamez, The Trancesetters, Jark Prongo, Basco - or any other number of project aliases) pull off one of their finest moments here as the Tata Box Inhibitors. In "Plasmids (Placid Mix)" you have a gradually building epic that isn't techno, trance or acid house - it's a bit of all three. To a certain extent, a lot of their work follows a formula (slow build, big break, big release, long out) but if it works why not. The other two tracks use similar sounds and patterns but to completely different effect. They're also excellent. Check Discogs for other reviews.
A1 Plasmids (Placid Mix)
B1 Plasmids
B2 Spanning
Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire
Well regarded on Discogs, but the housier or more abstract tracks have aged better than the big room techno ones. My favorites are Marc Kinchen's "Baby Can (M.K. Dub)" and Carl Craig's "Free Your Mind (Future)", but there is plenty to meet all tastes. Reel by Real's "Distance" is an absolute bleep-style classic - if you like this you should check last year's Martin Bonds retrospective "20 Years Surkit" for more Class A Detroit stylings.
A1 Dark Comedy - War Of The Worlds
A2 Reel By Real - Distance
B1 K.E.L.S.E.Y. - Baby Can (M.K. Dub)
B2 Piece - Free Your Mind (Future)
C1 Subterfuge - Unconscious World
C2 Santonio - Electricity
D1 Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes - Warwick
D2 69 - Desire
Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire
Very, very big Richie Rich track. For a long time he was the only person in Melbourne (and probably one of the few in the country) with a copy, and he wasn't telling anyone what it was. Melbourne was very competitive for DJs - like everywhere else I suppose - but there was also a strong desire to have exclusive tunes to generate an individual identity. To be a successful DJ required not just playing good tunes, but playing good tunes that no one else had. And this wasn't as easy as it might seem.
Back in the early 90s, the city (with a population of 3 million) only had one or two dance music record shops - no I'm not kidding - so it required some skill and dedication to get hold of different music to everyone else. It was not uncommon for guys to stay up into the middle of the night so they could ring London or New York and have tunes played down the phone to them; then anxiously wait 6 weeks or so before receiving a bundle in the mail. It was expensive and didn't have a high degree of success. Quite often you only liked one or two tunes out of twenty - meaning each track had cost you maybe a couple of hundred dollars. So once someone found a gem, the cover would be substituted for something plain or misleading and the inner label obscured or covered over. Pretty soon not even the owner knew what the record was called.
Not sure how he did it, but Richie consistently found real corkers like this - high energy European rave that wasn't full of silly hoover or farting sounds. It's actually by two English lads, but more about them in a later post.
Richie played the Apocalypso Mix with its big building intro of horns and a tuff call of "yeaaaahhh", but both mixes have qualities. They're also appropriately full on and manic - near the ends of each mix the sequencing of sounds gets quite fucked up. All in the name of mayhem I suppose.
Discogs
A1 Mayhem (Doin' The Apocalypso)
B1 Mayhem (Doin' The Mayhemizer)
Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire
On the heels of their first ep posted here a little while back, comes this 2 tracker. Produced without the aid of third man Steve Robbins, you still get two tracks of well produced techno here. "Melodia" could even be FSOM's finest work - peak time breakbeat led rave music with a tremendous breakdown half way through (just right to bring a rush on). They stole the breakbeat from Ian Pooley's "Message (All Over The World)", but no matter - this is an all time favorite. As for "Alien 8"? Never really listened to it much - a bit too 'outdoor bush festival' for my liking, but you should make up your own mind...
A1 Melodia
B1 Alien8
Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire
