51-60
51. KEYNELL
Artist: Gescom
From: This
Label: SKAM
Released: 1998
Keynell/Key Nell was a Gescom/Autechre project that stretched over several releases (the intricacies of which will be discussed later), but for now we have the postscript to the saga, an Autechre remix that was featured on a later, unassociated Gescom release on SKAM. This one is a propulsive bare bones workout, sawtoothed, harsh and rueful, like a fracas in a lumber yard. Proof, if needed, that AE could batter you just as hard as Aphex when they felt the urge.
52. ON A ROMANCE TIP
Artist: Caustic Window
From: Compilation
Label: Rephlex
Released: 1993
Grooverider’s opening tune at Pandemonium Andromeda in 1992, the ecstatic sentimentality of On The Romance Tip ranks alongside Analogue Bubblebath and Heliosphan in its direct appeal to both the feet and the heart, its warm accessibility only highlighted by the harshness of the rest of the material on this compilation of James’ early industrial hardcore work on Rephlex. Play it at 33 for an ambling Selected Ambient Works outtake, or bounce along to its urgent beats at 45, it’s a banger at both speeds. If the high hat and bass drum pattern in the breakdown sounds familiar, it might be because we recently heard something very similar in the intro to Audax Powder.
53. FALLING FREE (APHEX TWIN MIX)
Artist: Curve/Aphex Twin
From: Falling Free (Remix)
Label: Anxious Records
Released: 1992
One of the most perfect releases in the Aphex catalogue and a brilliant fusion of James’ early industrial sound with the more melodic material he would soon release on WARP. The vocal sample (seemingly the only element intact from the original track and later nicked by Photek) colours the pummeling syncopated beats like the ghostly traces of phantoms flitting between the gantries and pistons of a haunted steelworks, or (as David Stubbs describes it) like “a huge siren chorus, hovering and shimmering over the valley of rhythm like the Aurora Borealis.” There’s a sense of cold longing here, tempered by that brutally addictive groove – Hammerstein and Terri fucking in the Time Wastes as Joe Pineapples scopes them through his rifle. A superlative exemplar of machine soul on par with anything that ever came out of Detroit. It blows my mind that something so radical, so sleek and contemporary was released in 1992.
54. ZEROES & ONES (APHEX TWIN RECONSTRUCTION MIX 1)
55. ZEROES & ONES (APHEX TWIN RECONSTRUCTION MIX 2)
Artist: Jesus Jones/Aphex Twin
From: Zeroes & Ones
Label: Food
Released: 1993
James continued his run of inspired early 90’s remixes with not one, but two reworkings of the British alternative dance-rock band Jesus Jones. Zeroes and Ones is taken from their third LP, which, apparently, enjoys the historical distinction of being the first album recorded entirely on computer (hence the name), but other than some disassociated vocal snippets there is no trace of the original signal in Reconstruction Mix 1. Instead we find some plaintive and slightly eerie swells of melody, and a staccato construction of scratches, scrapes, clicks and knocks that could have been sampled from the workings of some great loom or an unusually well coordinated typing pool. On Reconstruction Mix 2 the mix is stripped down even further to create a ghostly dubbed out version dripping with unease and gorgeous harmonics. This is the better known remix due to its later inclusion on the 26 Mixes For Cash compilation, deservedly so as it’s probably the the most singular and atmospheric Aphex remix, and a nod towards the upcoming work on Selected Ambient Works Vol. II.
56. SPANGLE (AUTECHRE REMIX)
Artist: Seefeel/Autechre
From: Autechre Remix of Spangle
Label: Polyfusia
Released: 2003
Perhaps the closest Autechre have ever come to the music of Aphex Twin, their remix of Seefeel’s Spangle wouldn’t sound wildly out of place alongside some of the tracks from Selected Ambient Works II, and like Aphex’s remixes of Time to Find Me it also sticks closely to the sound of the original track. AE’s remix is dominated by a strange, winsome fluted melody that runs for the entirety of the 12 minute duration – that same element is present in the original, but there it is adorned with glistening swathes of guitar and heavy sub-bass, elements which soften its sense of unresolved eeriness. In Autechre’s version the sound is isolated, a lonely whistle that acts as the fulcrum for an exquisite consonance of sensuous layers of synth. Produced in 1994, “before basscadet came out” (according to Booth) this failed to find a place in Seefeel’s release schedule until 2003 when the DAT was retrieved from Mark Clifford’s archives – which is a shame, because I would have rinsed the living shit out of it.
57. HIVE
Artist: Seefeel
From: Ch-Vox
Label: Rephlex
Released: 1996
Outside of the cauldron of the UK’s rave scene, I can think of few electronic artists whose sound transformed so rapidly as Mark Clifford’s did between 1993-1996. The development of his peers is mostly traceable through the slow iterations, diversions and advancements in their musical evolution, but Seefeel’s three albums over this period feel like evolutionary jumps – from the warm, nutrient rich envelopment of Quiqie through to the first steps onto Succour’s barren savannah, and concluding with the mass extinction event of Ch-Vox.
And make no mistake, Ch-Vox is desolation, one of the most dissolute ambient statements of the 90’s, on par with anything produced by the isolationists. Even the album’s title is evidence of its abbreviated humanity, Ch-Vox was the scrawled shorthand on the original DAT of the heavenly Charlotte’s Mouth, the tune on which this record’s title track was based. The LP’s only track with a proper beat, Hive offers a vestigial reminder of the group’s ancestry; a mournful wail from the past, a mother’s lost lullaby echoing amongst the ashes.
58. FREMD
Artist: Pole
From: LP 1
Label: Kiff SM
Released: 1998
Pole’s debut LP 1 was a subtle bombshell, dropping the same year as Music Has The Right to Children (and was arguably as influential), his sound may not have seemed radical to glitch aficionados and fans of deep experimental techno, but for those outside those scenes this record was a revelation. Fremd has all of the quintessential elements of Betke’s unique style: the quiet static washes of his broken Pole filter, the precise organic composition, the insouciant bass weight, the slow accretion of tiny fragments of micronoise that coalesce into delicate rhythmic grooves. This is music of the interior, and it’s perhaps this deep introspection, this detachment that lends such a timeless quality to his work, because it sounds as impressive now as it did 25 years ago.
59. RSDIO
Artist: Autechre
From: Tri Repetae
Label: WARP
Released: 1995
If there were any doubts left by 1995 then Tri Repetae, put them to rest. An album of lethal abstraction and the clearest signal yet of Autechre’s focussed commitment to radical innovation in electronic dance music, one that sent the unmistakable message that these guys weren’t fucking around anymore. Take Rsdio and its bizarre sound design; a giant resonant boing on the downbeat, a hook that sounds like a dalek playing the didgeridoo, filigrees of pure tone counterpoints like coded distress calls, not to mention that baroque groove; sinuous, funky and sculptural, like the rippling deformation of molten stone caught under a strobe light. Whatever your opinion of this track (and Tri Repetae as a whole), you can’t say that it’s quite like anything that came before. We shall be hearing more from this wonderful album soon.
60. THE WAXEN PITH
Artist: Aphex Twin
From: I Care Because You Do
Label: WARP
Released: 1995
The last of the golden age Aphex albums, I Care Because You Do is unfairly regarded as the runt of a litter which included Selected Ambient Works I & II. My feelings on the record are perhaps coloured by my excitement over its release. I’d bought SAW in ‘93, I was aware of SAW II in ‘94 but penury meant I had to wait for a friend to buy it and then copy it off him, but by ‘95 I was on the ball, and when this LP finally dropped I had the vinyl home, recorded onto tape and onto my walkman in record speed – and I wasn’t disappointed. ICBYD is like a festival of early 90’s Aphexian aesthetics, a diverse synthesis of all that had come before. I loved the record instantly, and that love has grown over the years, to the point where I even look forward to Ventolin’s appearance in the playlist.
So it will come as no surprise that there are several cuts from the album ahead, beginning with the bucolic serenity of The Waxen Pith, which flows like a orchestral meander along the banks of an effervescent stream of beats – the theme music of a rural soap opera or a Sunday morning farming show from some kinder alternate reality.
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61. STARETHROUGH
Artist: Seefeel
From: Starethrough Ep
Label: WARP
Released: 1994
We have finally arrived at an example of the classic Seefeel sound; that wonderful synthesis of dub, industrial, shoegaze, dream-pop, ambient and electronica. The sound of Starethrough, filled with air and space, cavernous but enveloping, Sarah Peacock’s voice billowing like clouds of warm light flooding through a subterranean chamber. It’s a unique fusion which has won over many fans down through the years, despite some initial resistance from some 90’s electronica devotees due to the mistaken perception that Seefeel were some kind of rock outfit because of the presence of guitars in their music. It sounds absurd now of course, but it also misses the point, one which WARP obviously recognised: that the important thing about Seefeel wasn’t their choice of instruments, but the vibe they produced with those instruments, the same bittersweet ache of joy and grief and yearning that distinguishes the romantic electronic sound of the 90’s and, indeed, most of the music in The Deep Ark.
62. TEN DAYS OF BLUE
Artist: John Beltran
From: Ten Days of Blue
Label: Peacefrog Records
Released: 1996
“I’ve searched desperately for the colour of life and have brought back to you this collage of dreams…” so say the liner notes from John Beltran’s second LP, and that evocative phrase captures something of the melancholy allure of this glorious album. The string laden title track, Ten Days of Blue, is one of the sweetest of the suite, all bouncing analogue bass and blippy percussion, not dissimilar to the melodic ambient techno of B12 or As One. An essential classic that has been the subject of a long running copyright dispute which flared up again in 2018 when Peacefrog reissued the album.
63. SATORI
Artist: B12
From: Electro-Soma
Label: WARP
Released: 1993
London techno mainstays and the inspiration for Kirk Digergio’s ART label, B12 were one of the foundations of the scene that paved the way for the more individualist sounds that was beginning to emerge from WARP at the time of Electro-Soma’s release in ‘93. Satori is one of the more chilled tunes from an excellent record that is resolute to its adherence to the Detroit techno template.
64. WELL YOU NEEDN’T
Artist: Solvent
From: Solvently One Listens
Label: Suction
Released: 1999
At a time when electronica was either slowing down into the pseudo-hip hop beats of Boards of Canada and Funkstorung, or accelerating towards the hyperkinetic horizons of breakcore via drill’n’bass, the arrival of Jason Amm and his Suction label felt like a return to a more innocent time with its focus on the naive, emotional style of the early 90’s originators. The revival implicit in Solvent’s music doesn’t feel calculated or contrived however – if anything the opposite seems true. This was music spun out of a reverence, a deep love for the sounds of his progenitors, and its testament to Amm’s skill that he never slips into pastiche or mimicry, but rather creates his own mini-genre, an earnest continuation of the emotronic tradition, evident in the ardent electro minimalism of Well You Needn’t.
65. TEST
Artist: Funkstorung
From: Appetite For Disctruction
Label: Studio !K7
Released: 2000
Funkstorung’s debut album came after a string of successful remixes and EPs and saw the duo moving into a more spacious sound; as glitchy and fluttery as ever but with slower tempos and a stronger hip hop influence, dropping us into a zone somewhere between Company Flow and Autechre. The album opener Test is faster than most of the record, but it still rolls with the kind of hesitant head-nod tumble we find throughout the LP.
66. LE SILENCE DU TEMPS
Artist: Bochum Welt
From: Les Dances D’Été
Label: Kromode Records
Released: 1995
We continue with a delightful Bochum Welt doubleplay, opening with the charming Le Silence Du Temps, a minimal tune even by Di Costanzo’s standards, consisting of nothing more than some naive music box chimes over an unhurried electro rhythm. A cool breeze on the terrace as fishing boats sail by in the bay.
67. ASTEROIDS OVER BERLIN
Artist: Bochum Welt
From: Module 2
Label: Rephlex
Released: 1996
One of my most enduring early memories of Bochum Welt’s music is the moment I dropped the needle on the B side of a freshly purchased copy of Module 2 and heard the stunning Asteroids Over Berlin for the first time. At the time I didn’t have any real framework to understand the influences at play, I just assumed Bochum Welt was a German artist with some Kraftwekian lineage – which was half-right. His music oozes with the same classiness as Dusseldorf’s finest, their same sense of electronic eternalism, like the final broadcasts of an advanced civilisation echoing endlessly through the cold reaches of the cosmos.
68. STUD
Artist: Autechre
From: Tri Repetae
Label: WARP
Released: 1995
1995. 6:30AM. Curtains tightly closed against the dawn. The room descending in a fog of weed. Someone puts this on the decks and it’s like every synapse that’s been firing for the last 6 hours implodes, activated by an inverse stimulus, an anti-rush that shivers through you from without and reverberates in the hollowed channels of your nervous system…
Whilst dance music has shown itself to be endlessly inventive in the pursuit of the rush, those sounds that accentuated the ecstasy high, by ‘95 Autechre had cultivated a palette of sounds seemingly engineered to achieve the opposite effect. Tapping into the hyper-arousal and aural receptiveness of the post-party party to enhance the shivers, fugues and aches of the MDMA comedown. We can hear this in the soft uncanniness of Stud, the blurring of sound which lends a delicate, amorphous, aching beauty to what is ostensibly a relatively simple grand piano style hook over a complex assemblage of mechanical stutters, shuffles and squeaks.
69. SNOWSTORM
Artist: The Irresistible Force
From: Global Chillage
Label: Rising High
Released: 1994
Mixmaster Morris is a legend of 90’s chill-out, his insatiable appetite for new music and dedication to rave ambience led to his involvement with nearly every collective, label or party of note within the scene and his production work as Irresistible Force and Dreamfish (with Pete Namlook) is beloved by many survivors of the period. What isn’t discussed so much is his immense technical skill as a DJ. Morris played across the board, everything from kosmische, to Japanese environmental ambient, to trip hop to the glitchiest of electronica, often enhancing his sets with live samples and music played direct from tape. One of very few DJs along with DJ Food and Surgeon who regularly played out this sound, and I have always found much to admire in his technical approach to mixing.
Snowstorm is one of my favourites of his early productions, its sporadic bongo rolls more than justified by its melancholy atmosphere and disorienting stereo panned arpeggios.
70. GLITCH
Artist: Autechre
From: Amber
Label: WARP
Released: 1994
Glitch is one of many explorations of reverb in Autechre’s music, specifically the Alesis QuadraVerb which was used extensively on this track, as Scott Wilson explains:
“Brown and Booth were able to create the eerie, stretched-out synth sounds that start the track using just a Roland-202 MicroComposer (a sort of cross between a TB-303 and SH-101 synth) and a QuadraVerb, a trick that would be easy to do in software today, but would have been particularly laborious with the effects unit’s tricky menu system.”
This tonal bedding underpins a stately, glacial melodic construction with the rhythmic energy supplied via a gently insistent unfolding of electroid percussion.
