31-40
31. LEAFS BROUGHT BY THE WIND
Artist: Bochum Welt
From: Desktop Robotics
Label: Rephlex
Released: 1997
In the Iain M Banks novel Look to Windward, an AI orbital hub mind commissions a piece of music to commemorate a centuries old genocidal supernova, with the performance timed to coincide with the flash of distant light from the explosion. It would have been easier (though less dramatic) to simply play Bochum Welt’s Leafs (sic) Brought By The Wind, a track suffused with exactly the tight kind of mournfully languid poetry demanded by such an occasion.
32. PAPUA NEW GUINEA (DUMB CHILD OF Q MIX)
33. PAPUA NEW GUINEA (DALI MIX)
Artist: The Future Sound of London
From: Papua New Guinea
Label: Jumpin’ & Pumpin’
Released: 1991
There is a segment on the long running British TV quiz show University Challenge, in which the contestants are asked to identify a piece of classical music based on a few seconds of playback. As a kid I was often amazed by the rapidity of the answers, how some people could hold such a perfect recall of a tune in their head. I realise now that this isn’t the exercise in memory I assumed it to be, rather that there are some records that bypass cognition entirely, embedding themselves so deeply in the limbic system that they are recalled at the slightest prompt. Papua New Guinea is one such record, a boundary crossing anthem that for an instant fused the worlds of early 90’s breakbeat hardcore with the burgeoning emotional electronica sound. It could easily have gone so wrong, this combination of Lisa Gerrard’s ethereal vocals, exotic nature sounds, breakbeats, dub bass and tribal percussion – but the synthesis is so deft, the final product so drenched with otherworldly, ecstatic eeriness that it has effortlessly transcended the era that spawned it.
Featured here are two mixes, the extended ambient sections from the Dumb Child of Q mix (which featured on the seminal Future Shock VHS) and some loops from the original ‘bloody massive’ 12” mix. There’s a great piece on the making of Papua New Guinea from Sound on Sound and FSOL fans could also do a lot worse than visiting this wonderful track by track compendium of their work.
34. HELIOSPHAN
Artist: Aphex Twin
From: Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Label: Apollo
Released: 1992
On paper this is a simple enough tune, just a breakbeat, some 909 drum hits and a synth pad and lead, but if ever a track was more than the sum of its parts it’s this one. It may be something to do with its recording, the tape compression that imparts a distorted rawness to its sound, or it could just be the simplicity of its composition and its unapologetic appeal to the heartstrings, but Heliosphan seems to burn as ferociously as its solar namesake. All that energy, power and fury; high hats moving so fast that their individual notes seem to merge into a rolling wave of detonations, the relentless strikes of the Apache’s snare, and of course, that beautiful swell of synth, like an expanding sphere of golden light. This is elemental music, unwrought and untamed and ecstatic, like the glistening of sunlight on a stormy sea. It’s the track Zeus plays when he’s smiting mortals, it’s the rousing battle speech and the rapturous last charge. It’s a song of the sun that makes an Icarus of us all.
35. HELIOSPHAN (LIVE MIX)
Artist: Aphex Twin
From: user48736353001 Soundcloud Dump
Label: None
Released: 2015
It must have been sometime in the late 90’s when I first heard this at an Aphex gig, and I’m not ashamed to say I completely lost my shit. From that moment on it became something of a white whale, and when the tune was finally liberated in the great Soundcloud dump of 2015 I was prepared, slotting it into its place in the mix just hours after the 320 became available. This cut seems more in focus than the original; slightly downtuned with thicker high hats and a crunchier, more syncopated Apache break – but the main attraction is that ridiculous squelchy acid bass line that bounces all over the track like some juvenile maniac hearing their favourite Aphex tune on a dancefloor for the first time.
36. NETTLES & PRALINES
Artist: μ-Ziq
From: Bluff Limbo
Label: Rephlex
Released: 1994
Transitioning out a big tune can be tricky at the best of times. It’s often a good idea to just try and keep the groove going rather than attempt to compete with the energy of the anthem you’ve just played. Nettles & Pralines (from my other favourite μ-Ziq album) provides a tuff and clattery drum intro that does exactly this, rolling out the rhythm before we return to melody with some quiet synth pads and a whistling hook.
37. PHI*1700(U/V)
38. PHI*1700 (U/V) (LP VERSION)
Artist: μ-Ziq
From: PHI*1700(u/v) / Tango N’Vectif
Label: R&S Records / Rephlex
Released: 1994 / 1993
A tendency left mostly unexplored in IDM circles, this is our first encounter with jazz influences, or at least the jazzier side of Mike Paradinas, who was prolific in his use of faux-real instrumentation and ocassionally dallied in an irony drenched electronic lounge sound.
Phi*1700 is a tough prototype of this style with soft chords and an extended xylophone workout over densely layered percussion. The LP version is shorter with a different intro to the R&S 12” which also featured the static weirdness of Xolbe II.
39. CLOCK FACTORY
Artist: The Sabres Of Paradise
From: Sabresonic
Label: WARP
Released: 1993
From a genuinely Balearic album that flits between techno, house, downtempo and dub, Clock Factory sees the trio go into full-on John Carpenter mode with a spooky 14 minute ambient epic, replete with eerie synth lead, arpeggiated bass and some lovely stereo field atmospherics.
40. TIED
Artist: Seefeel
From: Fracture / Tied
Label: WARP
Released: 1994
Seefeel’s follow up to their WARP debut Starethrough, was a precursor to the darker, more claustrophobic and industrial sound they would explore on 1995’s Succour, a noticeable shift in the style of the group, evident in even this little loop of the heavy-industry beats of Tied. We’ll be seeing (and feeling) more from them later.
41-50
41. UNTITLED 5 (B1)
Artist: Musik Aus Strom
From: Untitled
Label: Bunker Records
Released: 1995
Musik Aus Strom was an early alias of Funkstrorung’s Chris De Luca & Michael Fakesch, and this untitled EP was one of a number of techno records they released under the name in 1995. We shall hear more of the duo later, but for now all we get is a four to the floor kick drum.
42. CURTAINS
Artist: Solvent
From: RDJCS5-EP
Label: Suction Records
Released: 2011
This is our first encounter with Solvent (aka Jason Amm), who was one of the true carriers of the flame of soulful melodic electronica throughout the late 90’s and beyond. Curtains is taken from a record made entirely with a Yamaha CS5 monosynth that was previously owned by Aphex Twin – but alas, all we have here is another short drum loop from its intro. We shall meet Jason again later in the mix.
43. SCHOTTKEY 7TH PATH
Artist: Aphex Twin
From: Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Label: Apollo
Released: 1992
Despite countless listens over the years, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (and SAW II) remain somewhat impenetrable to my ears. They came at a time when my knowledge and understanding of music was primitive at best, and my perception of these albums are still coloured by those early impressions, an odd aversion to analysis which has persisted through time. It wasn’t until I embarked on this project that I was forced to think seriously about their musical qualities; tempo, key, harmonics, rhythm… and to consider other factors like instrumentation, sample sources and production techniques. The one remaining enigma was in the titles themselves, and I was intrigued to find a number of electronic engineering references amongst the evocative melange of pidgin Greek and nonsense words that make up the tracklist of the album.
Xtal is short for crystal oscillator, an electronic oscillator circuit that uses a piezoelectric crystal, Pulsewidth is a measure of energy widely used in the fields of radar and power supplies, and Schottkey 7th Path is a reference to the Schottky diode, a semiconductor that, when combined with a transistor, shunts current along different paths dependent on the input voltage. Not quite what the title evoked in my thoughts – I had a different kind of path in mind, some arcane passage through the woods, a hidden trail that draws you into the dark, mesmerised by the sounds of distant drums, the chittering of strange insects and the insistent calls of some mysterious beacon.
44. KÄFER
Artist: Pole
From: Wald
Label: Pole
Released: 2015
The first appearance of Pole (aka Stefan Betke), Käfer is typical of his glitchy low key dubwise style, a core element of his unique sound since his first releases in the late 90’s. His work ranks alongside the likes of Basic Channel, Oval and SND in the glitch/dub techno arena, but also possesses a deep sense of melancholy meditative abstraction in its gentle rhythmic constructions of static, crackle and noise.
45. BIAS
Artist: Num Num
From: Signalflow
Label: Toytronic
Released: 1999
Another one from Toytronic and another Martin Haidinger alias, in Num Num’s Bias the contrast between the cerebral/complex versus the melodic/naive is undeniable. The twitchy high end fussiness of the beats placing us firmly in IDM territory, with the jangly hook and tinge of Reese bass pulling us back out.
46. RAE
Artist: Autechre
From: LP5
Label: WARP
Released: 1998
It begins in medias res, a slow projectile rising with inevitable momentum amidst the whine of resonant engine noise and billowing clouds of percussion. The extraordinary Rae makes me think of some bittersweet biographical montage, fragments of a happy life whizzing by at high speed and then when it drops tempo (seemingly without missing a beat) we’re suddenly in slow mo at a sunlit funeral, every detail crystallised in warm light as the drums concede defeat and that achingly sad refrain takes command, illuminating every micron of grief in the faces of the mourners who watch on as the grave is slowly filled.
This tune has it all. Sadness and hope, deconstruction & reconstruction, decay and rebirth. A profound work from an absolute triumph of a record – which we will revisit later.
47. ON
Artist: Aphex Twin
From: On
Label: WARP
Released: 1993
The first Aphex release on WARP and subject of a nautically themed stop motion video which seems to capture something of the wild, alfresco feel of On – the thunderstorms, those twinkly piano raindrops, the synth washes like waves moving up and down the beach, counterpoint melodies like drift lines below the dunes. A ray of light on an essential EP of dark and brutally pummeling industrial techno.
48. ENTERING THE WARP
Artist: Bochum Welt
From: Eldar
Label: Art of Perception
Released: 2001
Another slice of soulful electronic pop perfection served with Di Costanzo’s customary elan, this later Bochum Welt number appeared on AOP’s Warhammer 40K themed series of (mostly) techno 12”s. With its squeaky drums, acid tinged hook and willowy pads the vibe on Entering The Warp is less grimdark far-future sci-fi and more St. Tropez sunset.
49. SECOND SCEPE
Artist: Autechre
From: Anvil Vapre
Label: WARP
Released: 1995
A permanent fixture in my bag during the 90’s, and one from a now extinct breed of Autechre tunes that were deep yet also dancefloor (and DJ) friendly. The drum pattern on Second Scepe has a wonky, stomping dancehall feel, full of bitcrushed crunch and little sparkles of rhythmic vocal – and then that heavy bass synth kicks in, setting a melodic foundation that builds to a wonderfully rich and heart tugging finale. I regularly played this out at the wrong speed and reading through the discog comments I was gratified to learn that there seems to be a lot of people who enjoy this at 33, including (I assume) Brown and Booth as Dael from Tri Repetae bears more than a passing resemblance to a slowed down version of this monster.
50. Y-INTERCPNKT
Artist: Phoenecia
From: Randa Roomet
Label: WARP
Released: 1997
Schematic Records founders Josh Kay and Romulo Del Castillo would create some of the murkiest and most compellingly nauseating electronica ever made on 2000’s amazing Brownout LP, but Y-Intercepnkt, taken from their debut release, lies much closer to the dancefloor roots of WARP in its propulsive, rhythmic tuffness.
