347: Whirl-y-Waves, Volume 3: Sounds Imported, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Whirl-y-Waves, Volume 3: Sounds Imported (2005)
24 tracks, 155 minutes (2 CDs)
Stream and download via the Whirl-y-Gig website

The Whirl-y-Gig is a wonderful world of alternative dance music. A parallel dimension of love, light and epic bangers. Well, it is once a month. The Whirl-y-Gig is actually London’s longest running club night, and has been transforming spaces all over the city into pools of peace since 1981. Once upon a time, Whirl-y-Gig was a common fixture at festivals, including WOMAD, and now they have their own – the Whirl-y-Fayre, hosted in August every year in the Vale of Avalon. The décor is a beautiful mix of psychedelic fabrics, colours, flowers, trippy lights, lasers, UV, East African and South Asian patterns and abstract shapes. The smell is a mix of incense and euphoria (and a little weed). Everyone is welcome, and its wide-ranging audience reflects that. Elderly hippies dance with first-time clubbers and everyone feels the love. Until licensing laws got the better of it, it was even an all-ages affair, and the kids were made as welcome as anyone else. An hour before the end (at 6 or 7am), a huge parachute drops from the ceiling, the music turns chill-out and everyone comes down gently into the morning on a gently undulating flow of bliss. What a place.

And behind the decks, every time, for (at least) eight hours a go, is the legendary DJ Monkey Pilot. His sets are as eclectic as the people that attend: there’s techno, trance, drum’n’bass, dubstep, house… but for me, one of the most important roles of the Whirl-y-Gig was as a vibrant centre of the world dubtronica scene at its height in the 90s and early 2000s. So many of that scene came through the Whirl-y-Gig doors, whether as artists or as partygoers (usually both), and the club duly responded by becoming the place to hear the newest and the best in internationally-focused, dubwise electronica. The list is jaw-dropping. Transglobal Underground, Loop Guru, Dreadzone, the State of Bengal, Kamel Nitrate, the Kumba Mela Experiment, Banco de Gaia, MoMo, Zion Train, System 7…I could go on and on. Two of the albums we’ve already covered on this blog even have tracks named after the club – Dr Didg’s Serotonality and Afro Celt Sound System’s Volume 1: Sound Magic – such is its influence.

Which brings us to this album. It’s the last of three compilations in the Whirl-y-Waves series, and it’s basically just a little bit of Whirl-y-Gig that you can make in your very own home. It’s two CD-length mixes by Monkey Pilot himself built up of all solid Whirl-y-classics. The first CD is full-on dancing hard at midnight music; the second takes a more chill-out approach, still with beats, but appropriate for those early morning still-awake peace-outs. Parachute music, in other words. Each of the three Whirl-y-Waves mixes are essential in my opinion, but I went for this third volume purely because of those first four tracks: ‘King of the Sound and Blues’ by Zion Train, ‘Yellow and Black Taxi Cab’ by Transglobal Underground, ‘Tandoori Shakeaway’ by Kamel Nitrate and ‘Ararim (Friends, Family and Lovers Remix)’ by Oojami. To start an album that way is simply obscene – that’s over 20 minutes of just some of the best world dubtronica imaginable. And after that, the vibe just continues.

The Whirl-y-Gig is some proper utopian shit, and if the world were more like it is inside those walls, it would be a happier, and certainly dancier, place. But life can’t be a Whirl-y-Gig all the time, so for the rest of it, this album can help. Light that incense, flick those lights and sail across those Whirl-y-Waves into a better place…

342: People's Colony No. 1, by Temple of Sound & Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali

Temple of Sound & Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali (United Kingdom/Pakistan)
People's Colony No. 1 (2001)
10 tracks, 65 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve always seen this album as sort of the younger sibling of the collaborations between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook. Those releases weren’t too much earlier than this one – Mustt Mustt was from 1990, Night Song from 1996 – but they really set the stage for just what could be achieved in bringing sacred Sufi qawwali music from South Asia into the realm of world dubtronica. Together, Temple of Sound and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali took to that stage and made it their own.

With the pedigree on display, this was always going to be an impressive album. Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali is headed by the brothers Rizwan and Muazzam Mujahid Ali Khan, nephews of Nusrat and heirs to his impressive legacy; Temple of Sound are Neil Sparkes and Count Dubulah, producers and multi-insturmentalists both, then fresh from their departure from Transglobal Underground, of which they were co-founders.

The Khan/Brook collaborations yielded indisputably genius results, but focused more on the ambient and ethereal side of electronica with more of a chill-out vibe than necessarily one for the dance floor. This album takes a different tack. This one is darker and feistier, dancier and dubbier. The programmed drums and synths pump things up to trance levels, with the tabla cycles and harmonium vamps always crucial in the mix. The soaring and ecstatic wailing from the massed voices of the qawwali party is key to the whole thing, too. The mood of the pieces is dictated by the shape of the qawwali, and the dubwise beats and bass are its servants. The album still has its more meditative moments that provide pools of cool among the fever, which slowly build back up into the most intense sections.

The idea at the core of People's Colony No. 1 was that it should be ‘21st century qawwali’ and these ebbs and flows reflect that. I would also go further and say that this is ‘international qawwali.’ Qawwali itself was always a fusion, mixing poetic and musical forms from India across to Persia, and occupying the space between classical and folk music; with Temple of Sound, Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali have kept the emotional resonances and spiritual impact of the original form while turning it into something completely different. It is clear and audible in the music that this was a real collaboration – Sparkes, Dubulah and the two Khans always there together, creating and consulting with each other all along the way.

273: Club Meets Dub, Vol. 2, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Club Meets Dub, Vol. 2 (1996)
12 tracks, 72 minutes
YouTube playlist

This is what happens when dub…meets the club. It’s the purest form of what I insist on calling dubtronica. There’s all sorts of club music represented on this compilation, with trance, house and techno at the top of the list, all of it approached with a dubwise frame-of-mind. You can even hear the roots from which styles such as dubstep evolved. Tracks are included from big names such as Zion Train, Dreadzone and Iration Steppas, as well as a bunch of previously unreleased tracks from lesser-known wonders.

Dub usually lends itself well to the ambient side of electronic music, but this is no chill-out session: this is UV sculptures, psychedelic Celtic-/Indian-inspired artwork, laser shows and strobe lighting and going bonkers at 3am music. The tracks are also well-mixed by Quark of Acid Rockers, meaning that if you want a banging club night in your own living room, all you need is some right chunky speakers and Club Meets Dub. Bonus points if you get someone to flick the lights on and off in time with the music. Sorted.

267: Night Song, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook (Pakistan/Canada)
Night Song (1996)
8 tracks, 48 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

When I was making up my list of Good Albums at the end of last year, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook’s Night Song basically gained an automatic entry due to its position on my ’10 days, 10 all-time favourite albums’ list that inspired this bigger project. Since then, it has been granted a fancy vinyl and downloads reissue from Real World Records, which I reviewed in the current issue of Songlines magazine. That actually throws up a bit of a quandary…I’ve just written about this album, what else is there to say?

In the review, I talked about how Brook’s production of chill-out, prog, electronica and dub works in sympathy with Khan’s heavenly qawwali vocals in a subtler, less bombastic way than the pair’s previous outing, the more successful but more controversial Mustt Mustt from 1990. I also talked about how the stand-out tracks are so effective because, even with all the additional elements and styles at play, it still retains a rolling structure in the same way as a traditional qawwali piece, which Khan’s vocals take to with a natural ease.

In magazine writing, though, and especially in reviews, restricted word counts mean that only broad strokes can really make it in, and the subtleties are often missed out. There are so many details that make Night Song impressive and important that get lost in a 200-word limit.

I didn’t get to talk about how the first track on the album ‘My Heart, My Life’ starts with the kora of Kauwding Cissokho. Just imagine: by 1996, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was world-famous for his traditional South Asian qawwali and his forward-thinking collaborations in dance music and electronica; you buy his new CD, stick it in the machine and what you’re greeted with is not the harmonium and tabla of qawwali or synths and drum sequences of electronica, but the rippling strings of the Senegalese harp. For the first minute of the album, it’s just kora and Khan’s vocals, an entirely unexpected combination that is nevertheless so delicate and peaceful. I myself could listen to a whole album of just that, but alas that never happened. As it is, this introduction helps to recalibrate the ears coming into this. You know not to expect what you had in mind, but you also know that whatever is coming up is going to be beautiful, in whatever shape it becomes.

I didn’t get to talk about how the fiasco around Mustt Mustt stemmed from Brook’s remixing of Khan’s vocals. While aesthetically reasonable from a Western standpoint – it is a classic album, after all – this technique paid little heed to the meaning of the poetry being recited, leading at points to important phrases being chopped-up half-way through, or even in the middle of words, rendering them meaningless. Even more seriously, it occasionally played with deeply religious utterances in a way that was perceived by some as corrupting and undermining the spiritual message and word of God. While Khan himself had agreed to the releasing of the album in its finished state, members of the Muslim community were understandably less than pleased. When it came to working together again on Night Song, the remixing was undertaken in a much more considered way, with Khan having a more hands-on input in the production of the album, as well as respected Muslim authorities brought in to consult on the manner in which the poetry was used. Although this is not something that can necessarily be heard by those who do not speak Farsi, Urdu or Punjabi, I think this was a very important step in world fusion: of musicians working together in equal collaboration, of differing cultural sensibilities being acknowledged and accommodated as a valuable part of the music-making process, and of artists making mistakes, owning them, learning from them and putting that learning into practice. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and the album came out even stronger for that.

I didn’t get to talk about how I connect to this album on a personal, emotional and nostalgic level. I remember sitting on the stairs of my first home, listening to this music and asking what it was. I remember lying by the patio windows in the warm sun and flicking through my dad’s record collection and putting this on, and the excitement I felt in that second or two between putting in the disc and the sound emanating from the speakers in anticipation of what I was about to hear, what I knew was my favourite album. I remember listening to it from a portable CD player in a den I built in the back garden out of posts and blankets, reading a book. I remember listening to tracks from the album on my very first mp3 player (it could only hold about 40 songs) at night while on a holiday with Scouts. Are these memories real? I don’t know. I’m not even sure the timescale lines up correctly with that first one. But listening to the album brings all those memories flooding back. Even if they’re not real, their existence in my brain is inseparable from the act of hearing the music of Night Song, just like listening to any piece of music is attached to innumerable memories and emotions that are different for every single person, meaning that everyone necessarily connects to music in their own individual way.

I didn’t get to talk about these things, and I didn’t get to talk about a million other points that make this album interesting or dated or Good or not as good as it could have been or important or influential or poignant or anything else that makes music such a vital art form in the lives and emotions of so many people. Every single album, even every piece of music, could be the subject of a detailed book about its background, its history, the making-of, the musicology of it, the production, the aftermath, the cultural significance (or insignificance), how it effects people’s lives and minds and relationships, the ramifications on the artists and other music going on into the future, and and and. Music is so deep that words themselves can never realistically hope to grasp its true nature. 200 words can never be enough…but then neither is 1000.

265: Volume 1: Sound Magic, by Afro Celt Sound System

Afro Celt Sound System (United Kingdom/Ireland/Senegal)
Volume 1: Sound Magic (1996)
9 tracks, 66 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is the second time we’ve encountered the Afro Celt Sound System on this blog, and this time we’re actually talking about a real album. In total, ACSS went on to release a total of five studio albums in their original incarnation and a further two (so far) in their current set-up with a different core membership. But of all those albums, it is still this one, their very first, that grabs me the most and grabs me hardest.

The excitement of the record is palpable in its music. World music fusions had been created before this point, but 1996 was still a time when it felt like everything was possible and full of potential – as opposed to now, where it does feel a little bit as if almost every conceivable crossover has already been attempted. When Sound Magic first arrived, nothing like this had been heard before. The combination of Irish and Scottish music with West African music was already exhilarating – firstly in even daring to bring two such apparently distant traditions together as one, and then, on listening, the amazement that the styles worked together so well – but to also set that meeting in the sonic surrounds of club, rave and dub music just adds a hundred possible more mouth-watering directions for completely new experimentation.

When I play this album today, all those possibilities and the surprises they conjure up still send me reeling. Senegalese kora dueting with Irish sean nós singing; tama and bodhrán drums trading rhythms while weaving between programmed beats; very-90s-sounding synths taking their rightful place alongside uilleann pipes and low whistles in the Irish heterophony; snatches of sounds from other traditions here and there in the Armenian duduk, Kenyan nyatiti and Siberian throat singing. Even now, after nearly 25 more years of musical innovations since, it still sounds a little hard to believe, but each combination manifests beautiful flowers.

There’s barely a wrong musical turn on the whole album, which is even more incredible when it’s taken into account that these musicians often couldn’t speak the same language. They were making up the rules on the fly and communicating through their instruments. It doesn’t become a confusing amalgam either, where everything is thrown together with a dance beat and a hope that people will be too busy moving to pay too much attention, as some fusions tend to sound like. No, there’s an obvious amount of deep and careful thought behind every piece of music, every texture change and every new instrument introduced. The club bangers work brilliantly – ‘Whirl-y-Reel 1’ is still an enduring favourite in my bounce-your-head-off moments – but the long, thoughtful and calm pieces such as the final medley ‘Eistigh Liomsa Sealad/Saor Reprise’ are just as delightful and perfectly complementary.

One of the reasons the Afro Celt Sound System were so exciting was precisely because the Afro Celt Sound System had never existed before, not only in our realm, but even in most of our wildest imaginations. That some imaginations could fathom such an ensemble, such an unexpected sound, is something that the rest of us must be thankful for. ACSS changed the face of world music and their impact on how musicians and audiences approach cross-cultural fusions cannot be overstated. And it all started, appropriately, with Volume 1…Sound Magic indeed.

262: Never Trust a Hippy, by Adrian Sherwood

Adrian Sherwood (United Kingdom)
Never Trust a Hippy (2003)
11 tracks, 58 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Adrian Sherwood was already one of the biggest names in modern dub by the time he released this album, and that’s even more impressive when you account for this being his debut.

Okay, that’s splitting hairs a little bit. Sherwood is most well known as the founder and producer of On-U Sound, the legendary UK dub label with a stable including African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate, Tackhead, Gary Clail and New Age Steppers as well as many Jamaican legends such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Prince Far I. As the producer of most – if not all – of the On-U catalogue, Sherwood curated the label’s whole sound and developed his own musical brand while he was at it.

On Never Trust a Hippy (oddly released on Real World Records rather than On-U Sound), you can hear Sherwood revelling in the even-freer-than-normal reign. Everything here is the juiciest dub, but he’s not content to stick to King Tubby, Lee Perry-style productions. Sherwood brings in so much more than just roots reggae with a heavy bass and some delay – the sounds here are so diverse, with techno trance, acid jazz, Asian underground and new age among many, many other styles that are explored, in depth or in passing, over this hour-long whirlwind. That doesn’t even count the many diverse samples that he uses throughout too, that are so chopped and changed as to become entirely new elements, which then evolve further in Sherwood’s ever-shifting musical contexts.

A boon of releasing on Real World is that their own back catalogue became fair game for Sherwood’s treatments, and he took good advantage of that privilege to include two remixes among his original compositions on the album: ‘Dead Man Smoking’, from S.E. Rogie’s beautiful palmwine ‘Dieman Noba Smoke Tafee’, and ‘Paradise of Nada’, from Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali as already filtered through the dubwise lens of Temple of Sound. Both of these remixes shed a light on Sherwood’s approach to his work. Both sound radically different from the originals, with completely different structures, atmospheres and even styles, but the musical meaning at the core of both pieces are pristinely intact.

Listening in this way helps to understand the way he moulds his own compositions too. The individual pieces may vary wildly in their styles and approaches to sound, but Sherwood makes sure that they all have the same consistent meaning running throughout, yes building, yes changing, but always with the same deep respect for ears and minds and always, forever, the deepest dub.

When you have already pioneered and pushed boundaries for decades before you release your first solo album, there’s no way that that album is going to be anything close to ordinary. With Never Trust a Hippy, Adrian Sherwood explored a whole deep jungle of music with his signature daring and inventiveness and emerged with something extraordinary.

257: Punt – Made in Ethiopia, by Invisible System

Invisible System (United Kingdom/Ethiopia)
Punt – Made in Ethiopia (2009)
12 tracks, 64 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Albums with lots of guests are usually a mixed bag – of qualities as well as styles. Just like with supergroups, it seems pretty accurate that the number of big names involved in the album-making process has a direct correlation with the likelihood that it comes out limp at the end of it. So when the back of the CD case for this album lists guest slots from no fewer than 19 musicians, you’d probably be forgiven for your misgivings. On the other hand, there’s me seeing the names Mahmoud Ahmed, Justin Adams, Juldeh Camara, Samuel Yirga, Count Dubulah, Mimi Zenebe, Neil Perch and Martin Craddick and just getting too exciting to hear all of their musical brains working together. What can I say, it’s a drug.

Luckily, with Invisible System guiding the ship, it all works to make an enjoyable trip (well, for the most part). Invisible System is the musicking moniker of Dan Harper, who works within electronica, dub and trance to create intelligent but dance-heavy fusions with African music. As an environmental worker, Harper lived for spells in both Ethiopia and Mali, two intensely musical cultures, and dove into the music scenes of both places, learning ways, making contacts and recording as much as possible. The Invisible System discography shows close work with musicians of both cultures, but for this first official release, it is Ethiopian music that takes the fore.

And, yes, it works. Maybe the track-by-track quality does fluctuate a little bit because of the supergroupification, but on the whole, the contributions of the Ethiopian musicians gel really well with Harper’s dubtronica, and it’s especially exciting when it bends towards the proggier side of things too. Because when this album hits its stride, it really hits. The third track, ‘Melkam Kehonelish’, is a stand-out for me. It brings together the old and new guards of Ethiopian jazz (legendary singer Mahmoud Ahmed and pianist Samuel Yirga, respectively), sticks Justin Adams providing trippy, atmospheric guitar in the background with Harper’s electronics providing a brooding dub – and bonus points for a wailing sax solo, the identity of whose performer evades me.

Harper himself is very vocal in reminding people that it was as part of the Invisible System project that Count Dubulah first connected with Ethiopian musicians, the meeting that eventually led to the creation of Dub Colossus. That Ethio-dub outfit ended up far eclipsing Invisible System in terms of popularity and success, and Harper’s perceived lack of recognition on the part of Dubulah remains an obvious sore point that seems to make its way to any mention of Invisible System’s output (although I’m sure Harper wouldn’t be happy with me putting it that way). I’ll be honest that it puts me off a little bit – for this project to be tainted with a palpable bitterness on the part of its main creator is a disservice. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t take anything away from the album’s most important aspect – its music. To turn the improvised jams of 20-odd musicians into an album that is not just coherent but tightly structured while still allowing a free-flow of creative ideas is an impressive feat that should not be overlooked.

228: A Gathering of Strangers, by UNITE: Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe

UNITE: Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe (United Kingdom/Bulgaria/Ireland/Hungary/others)
A Gathering of Strangers (2010)
15 tracks, 70 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

UNITE were a one-album (and I think one-tour) project that came into being, said what they wanted to say and faded away into their constituent parts again. Their only-slightly-awkward backronym Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe gives you some idea of what they’re about. Recorded across seven European capital cities and featuring urban folk musicians from even more, this album is the sound of a Europe under one banner, making brilliant music all together, making exciting new styles while all retaining their own unique identities.

That’s right: it’s a Brexit protest! Except, it was released six years before anyone realised it was much of a problem at all and when Nigel Fridge was just a fringe nutter instead of an apparently mainstream nutter. Not that there weren’t already concerning signs: the whole reason this album was made was to show the foolishness of xenophobia and to highlight in its own small way the values of intercultural exchange and bridge building.

The project itself was spearheaded by Tim Whelan and Hamid Mantu, the core duo behind Transglobal Underground. Although the album ostensibly revolves around its guest stars and the collaborations thereof, for my money, it’s clearly at its strongest musically when they let the TGU-iness to flow forth and build up vast layers of the dubtronica in and throughout all the other influences, like some mad lasagne. Whether it’s Bulgarian bagpipes and choirs, Czech dubstep, Victorian music hall songs or whatever the next artist brings, it’s all held firmly in place as an important element of the overall sound. I think the best run to demonstrate this is the three tracks of ‘Karanka’, ‘Van Dieman’s Land’ and ‘Immigrant Song’, with that middle track being the one I come back to the most. Based on an old British transportation ballad, provided here by Irish musician Martin Furey, it also includes half-sung half-rapped Mandinka from Czech-Senegalese singer Bourama Badji and Polish throat-singing from Bart Pałyga. It’s like some strange alternate universe where the concept behind the Afro Celt Sound System bore fruit with TGU at the helm instead, and it’s full of that slight darkness that TGU are brilliant at curating.

There are so many different influences going on here that it’s not possible to describe it all together, but that’s not really the point. It’s all good stuff and it’s the plurality and heterogeneity that makes it so – it revels in it. The saddest thing is that this album, the UNITE project and the messages at the heart of both have only become more relevant over the past nine years, rather than an artefact of their own time. I hope it can start becoming less relevant – if no less banging – as soon as possible.

181: Drum-Believable, by The Dhol Foundation

The Dhol Foundation (United Kingdom)
Drum-Believable (2007)
13 tracks, 62 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The Dhol Foundation is a many-headed beast, all spanning from that large, loud and powerful Punjabi barrel drum, the dhol. TDF is a school, an educational curriculum, a stable of session musicians and a storming live band. They also have a fair handful of albums under the TDF name too, and that's where the organisation's founder and figurehead Johnny Kalsi lets loose, invites his friends and experiments with as much music as he can in ways that would not necessarily be compatible with a live performance from a dhol troupe. Drum-Believable follows on the work from TDF's debut album Big Drum, Small World with a set of dhol-led world dubtronica, although bringing in an even more eclectic mix of senses and styles.

The first three tracks form a medley that sets the tone for the whole thing. The first piece 'Palace of Love' starts with the inimitable voice and sarangi fiddle of Ustad Sultan Khan before being joined by swelling strings, powerful dhol lines, jazzy acoustic guitar, bansuri flute, tabla and spoken word with all sorts of mystical synth drones holding it all together. It's all quite Nitin Sawhney-esque. Then is 'Simply H', a gentle Celtic fiddle piece played by Máiréad Nesbitt. It's short and sweet, and its unmetered nature makes it act a bit like an alap in preparation for the third track – TDF's biggest banger, 'After The Rain'. That one is basically a throwback to Johnny's days in the Afro Celt Sound System (before they reformed again, with Johnny stepping up as a co-frontman). It's based around a reel played by Nesbitt, with dance-dub bass electronics and – of course – the thumping of the massed dhol drums. It's great on the record, and even more powerful live, I've yet to see a performance of the piece that doesn't end with everyone in attendance pogoing around like mad.

After a globe-spanning opening trio of pieces that dwell deeply on the nature of sounds and timbres, remaining deliberate and precise from the slow openings to the bouncing at the end…TDF take it somewhere completely different, with the out-and-out bhangra party track 'Aja Nach Lai'. And so on goes the whole album. Styles are chucked around for fun, usually (but not always) with a dance/dubtronica focus, and usually (but not always) with more dhols than you can shake a stick at. It's all quite reminiscent of Transglobal Underground at their most exciting – and they're another band in which Johnny Kalsi has played a crucial role over the years.

For all its great music, I've also got to mention an important aspect of Drum-Believable - that title. It's another bottom-notch pun from Johnny Kalsi that so far also includes groaners such as Drums and Roses and the aforementioned Big Drum Small World. I for one am sad that he's never yet followed through with the threat to name a future album Drumblebees. Coming to our ears in 2020, maybe.

176: The Birth of Dar, by MoMo

MoMo (Morocco/United Kingdom)
The Birth of Dar (2001)
6 tracks, 41 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to stream or download this one online, unfortunately. However there are a few copies going for very cheap on discogs if this blog sufficiently piques your interest. I’d definitely recommend it…obviously.

Moroccan music has always seemed to me to have a bit of a darker edge to it than that of other Maghrebi countries. I don’t know what creates that feeling – it could be something as subtle as a unique tuning system, a small difference in timbre or a slightly lilted rhythm, but whatever it is, Moroccan music always seems particularly suited to a dark room of writhing bodies. It’s also one of the reasons that make its fusion with techno and other electronica work so well.

The name MoMo stands for ‘Music of Moroccan Origin,’ and that’s a great – and accurate – declaration of intent. The music of Morocco is their starting point, and after that, anything goes as they make their sound relevant to their UK-based context. That means elements of Berber music, Arab-Andalusian music and Morocco’s most famous Gnawa music, performed by the band-members and hacked up into samples, all provide grist for the mill for this album of psychedelic techno and breakbeat. Most satisfyingly, MoMo manage to maintain their source material’s dark edge and fold that into electronica carefully crafted to hold the same ever-so-slightly menacing vibe while still providing extremely dance-worthy rhythms. They pronounced this wonderful mix dar, or, as they described it succinctly on the album sleeve, ‘Dar Music is bloody foreigner music.’ The style as laid out on The Birth of Dar is a bold statement of (what was then) modern life: it’s uncompromisingly British and defiantly Moroccan, and neither gives way to the other, nor does it need to.

Calling this album The Birth of Dar gave a tantalising prospect of a new musical movement waiting to proliferate. But that never quite materialised. MoMo played gigs for a few years but then seemed to fade away into non-existence for the longest time. I had thought that MoMo as a project was completely dead, but it actually turns out they had some stirrings recently, and released an album last year with Jah Wobble, which you can hear on Spotify. Admittedly the only musician uniting these two albums is singer, percussionist and guimbri player Tahar el-Idrissi, but it’s still good that the spirit of MoMo continues in some form.

Although short-lived, the concept of dar still resonates as an important mindset and an ultra-cool, ultra-danceable and ever-so-slightly dark album in The Birth of Dar. It still has the power to resonate; hopefully the movement will get another chance at moving the world some point soon…or at least, that this album will be made easily listen-toable again.

170: Serotonality, by Dr Didg

Dr Didg (USA)
Serotonality (1998)
10 tracks, 47 minutes (original CD release)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Graham Wiggins gained the nickname Dr Didg while studying a DPhil in solid-state physics at Oxford University, where he became known for experimenting with the physics at play in his chosen instrument – the didgeridoo – in his spare time. He even invented a keyed didgeridoo and presented it on Tomorrow’s World with his square hairstyle. What a nerd. But then, of course, he was also the eponymous member of the band Dr Didg, one of the funkiest groups on the world dubtronica scene in the 90s, presented rocking out with his long hair and huge hippie clothes. A man of many faces, then.

The band’s whole focus is towards building up an almighty temple of groove, a sonic headspace in which trance-seekers can worship and dance. The didgeridoo is obviously at the heart of their sound, but it’s mostly used as a percussion instrument (a bit similar to beatboxing – didgboxing, maybe) and to interject its singular roars, which are drawn together in loops and form the basis of their sound. So, don’t expect deep Aborigine traditions here. Instead, there’s layers-on-layers of synths, drums, bass, guitars and horns creating something in the mid-space of funk, dub, jazz, house, techno and psytrance, often with a vaguely Egyptian-sounding lift to it too.

A weird brain connection for me on listening to Serotonality with fresh ears is its stylistic similarities to the techno-funk of the Jazz Jackrabbit soundtrack I wrote about months ago. My favourite track from the album, ‘Brand New Shoes’, with its too-funky-for-its-own-good groove and saxophone-synth lines, would fit right into that soundtrack, I reckon. I actually had to stop writing this for five minutes while I went a bit nuts to that track. Wonderful stuff.

In the early 2000s Dr Didg as a band slowly gigged less and less and eventually stopped being a permanent thing, although there were occasional reunion shows here and there. Wiggins carried on with his career as a physicist, co-writing such riveting papers as ‘Direct parallel image reconstructions for spiral trajectories using GRAPPA’ and ‘A 96-channel MRI System with 23- and 90-channel Phase Array Head Coils at 1.5 Tesla’ and helping to develop important technology in the field of biomedical imaging. I find it so impressive that someone can reach such high levels of achievement in such different arenas. When he passed away much too young in 2016, Wiggins left behind important legacies in medical technology and world dubtronica that will keep people living and grooving for a long time yet.

149: East of the River Ganges, by The Kumba Mela Experiment

The Kumba Mela Experiment (United Kingdom)
East of the River Ganges (2001)
10 tracks, 67 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The early 2000s were the glory days of world dubtronica, and The Kumba Mela Experiment was a supergroup between some of the UK scene’s leading names. The publicity around East of the River Ganges, the project’s only album, calls it ‘a collaboration between members of Dub Trees, The Orb, Suns of Arqa, Tangerine Dream, Dreadzone and Uri Geller’ …yeah, that Uri Geller. Okay, his participation seems somewhat of a gimmick, but don’t let that put you off too much – the rest of the contributors all have pedigree and work together well, and everything is brought together under the production of Youth.

The group’s name is actually a misspelling of Kumbh Mela, the huge Hindu festival at Allahabad, which sees hundreds of millions of worshippers bathe in the Ganga river – the event in 2001 was one of the biggest gatherings ever witnessed. That reference may give you a bit of a clue as to the direction the album moves towards. Although the basis of the music is all sorts of dub, electronica, psytrance and chill-out, the whole sound is informed by Indian music, with the strains of sitar, shehnai, bansuri and tambura floating all the way through.

What I love about this album is that it is a whole experience of its own. Most of the tracks are long – often over 10 minutes each – and every one of them is a journey in itself. They evolve slowly and take their time, but it never feels like it stagnates. The movement is constant even in its calmness – just like the stately movement of the ancient river. The chill-out vibes are strong here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of stonking beats and dub-infected bass drops.

I wouldn’t say this record has aged badly, more than it is a sound that definitely places it at a certain point in time. To be honest, I’m not in touch with the hippy electronica scene as – or if – it exists coming up to the 2020s, and so I don’t know what sort of sounds or personalities are being expressed nowadays, but this work of 18 years ago still lifts my spirit with the optimism it contains. It sounds utopian, seeming to promise the existence of one big blissed-out peace gathering of all creeds grooving to everyone else’s drum – a naïve fantasy, but it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t really seem to be heard in today’s climate of cynicism and forever-war. For shame. Luckily we still have these records to reminisce on those times. So turn off your mind, relax and float downstream – wash your troubles away to the sound of the Kumba Mela Experiment.

138: Impossible Broadcasting, by Transglobal Underground

Transglobal Underground (United Kingdom)
Impossible Broadcasting (2004)
12 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Quick announcement up top: as sheer coincidence would have it, Transglobal Underground are playing a very special concert TONIGHT if you're reading this on the day it's published – on 18th May. They’ll be performing at the Islington Assembly Hall in London with an old-school line-up including Natacha Atlas on vocals, and supported by Dub Colossus from TGU founder member Nick Page, who fuse Ethiopian music and dub. It will be a great one!

Transglobal Underground were the first proper gig that I ever attended. I’d been to loads of festivals before, and a couple of sit-down concerts in large halls, but seeing TGU at Telford’s Warehouse in Chester as a 13-year-old in 2004 was the first time I went to see a band in a small, dark, standing venue. They were absolutely brilliant. I managed to squeeze my way to the front to see the group crammed onto the smallest stage, which was overflowing with equipment, and playing the most banging and eclectic mix of international beats, dub, funk and electronica, and with live sitar, tabla and dhol to boot. Everyone was dancing a frenzy and the whole place was hot and sweaty. I had only ever experienced this sort of atmosphere at festivals, and the realisation that I could get that feeling basically any time I wanted – and much closer to where I lived – was absolutely intoxicating. What an amazing show that was. That was part of their tour promoting their new album Impossible Broadcasting.

TGU had already had a lot of success with their earlier material, even charting in the UK in the 90s. Their particular sound was, I guess, less fashionable by this point, but I reckon this album slaps just as hard as any of their others so far. As well as their standard brand of world-spanning dubtronica, they also invite an impressive roster of guests, including two very disparate vocal trios of Trio Bulgarka (Bulgarian choral folk) and Tata Pound (Malian hip-hop). Each piece has its own personality; there is the most terrifying two-minutes-and-thirty-three-seconds in music with ‘Sentinel’, a menacing, psychological horror of a track mixing Egyptian-style strings with synth drones, a wartime public service announcement and some foreboding spoken word from TGU’s TUUP; but you also have ‘Drinking in Gomorrah’, which tells a great and surreal tale of barkeeping and international party-scene homogeneity, with backing that’s groovy as funk. There are tracks that would be sure to fill any dancefloor, and tracks that are much more cerebral, that make you want to sit down and really work out the deeper meaning to the sounds, but they all fit easily alongside each other as one brilliant album.

I realise I am most definitely biased by my personal experience with this album and TGU’s performance of it all that time ago in Chester, but I do consider it one of the best albums of its style for its range, depth and just how much it stands up even 15 years later (oh my god…). At 13, it certainly took me long enough to get that first gig under my belt, but with TGU on such high form, I can barely think of a better way to make that milestone.

130: The Rough Guide to Asian Underground, by Various Artists

Various Artists (United Kingdom/South Asia)
The Rough Guide to Asian Underground (2003)
15 tracks, 78 minutes
Another one that can’t be listened to or downloaded online for some reason. Here’s a Spotify playlist I made, but it is missing a few tracks, unfortunately. You can still buy the CD at the World Music Network, or even more cheaply second-hand on Amazon.

For a really long time, the Rough Guide series from the World Music Network was one of the most valuable resources in world music, providing impressively in-depth and well-rounded introductions to music scenes by region, culture or genre in the space of a single CD each, often with short but informative essays and track breakdowns in the sleeves. There were so many excellent Rough Guide compilations that I had to be careful not to fill this blog up with them. It’s a shame that lately, although WMN still puts out Rough Guides, they are nowhere near the standard they once were – nowadays they seem to mostly be excuses to repackage material from their sister label Riverboat Records, and there’s not a sleeve note in sight. Ah well. This is a blog for Good Albums, so let’s look at one of them, then.

The Asian Underground scene was quite a big deal in the UK of the 1990s, and must surely have been one of the most exciting musical movements to be a part of (although I cannot speak from experience – I was a little kid growing up in the middle of nowhere in the north-west, but still). UK-based musicians and producers with backgrounds from all over South Asia were diving into the latest styles of electronica and dance music, as well as hip-hop, jungle, new age, dub and punk, and bringing along a unique Asian spin on things by introducing elements from what they heard at home: Indian classical music, Bollywood songs, qawwali, bhangra and all sorts.

The Rough Guide to Asian Underground has all of the factors that made the Rough Guide series so essential for listeners of good music from anywhere. For starters, it was compiled by DJ Ritu, who was one of the key players in the scene herself and responsible for a lot of the attention that came its way – who better suited to give the most succinct yet detailed introduction to it?

All the obvious and most well-known names of the scene are here of course, such as Asian Dub Foundation, Black Star Liner, the State of Bengal and Fun^da^Mental (whose track ‘Ja Sha Taan’ is probably the best on here, making excellent use of samples from the qawwali of Nawazish Ali Khan and the 1940s jazz-blues of Hot Lips Page). But there’s also some interesting and unexpected entries here. The album starts with ‘Streets of Calcutta’, a great track from sitarist Ananda Shankar from all the way back in 1975 that shows how deep the roots of Asian Underground go; there’s also some of Talvin Singh’s earliest work under the moniker Mahatma T with the track ‘Jihad’ from the 80s – he would later go on to be one of the biggest names in the Asian Underground scene, even making it overground as the first (and so far only) British-Asian winner of the Mercury Prize in 1999. And then there’s also a handful of tracks that were as-then unreleased, including one by another big name, Joi.

Now that is how you introduce a musical scene in a way that can get newcomers hooked and show them what they need to know while also including new bits and pieces to interest those already familiar with it. Bravo, DJ Ritu; World Music Network, take note.

105: Diaspora, by Natacha Atlas

Natacha Atlas (United Kingdom/Egypt)
Diaspora (1995)
12 tracks, 72 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

By the mid-90s, British-Belgian-Egyptian-Israeli singer Natacha Atlas was already a star within the UK’s world dubtronica scene. She was the lead vocalist with several pioneers of the scene, most notably Transglobal Underground and Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, and had guested with everyone from Loop Guru, Nitin Sawhney, Not Drowning, Waving and Apache Indian. With Diaspora, she struck out on her own with her first debut album…sort of.

Thing is, a Transglobal Undergound album under any other name sounds as sweet, which is good, because that’s basically what Diaspora is. It features a classic TGU line-up, with contributions throughout from Alex Kasiek (also known as Tim Whelan), Hamid Mantu, Count Dubulah (now mostly known as Nick Page), Neil Sparkes and Satin Singh, and the production is literally credited to TGU. That’s not to take Natacha’s influence out of things, as this album has its own sound; that is, very much influenced by the Arabic classical styles of her ancestral homeland of Egypt. Together with the standard TGU instrumentation, there’s also those wonderful massed strings of the Egyptian orchestra as well as oud, accordion and even some klezmer clarinet for good measure.

There are a few tracks where they go more down the traditional Arabic route, but the album is at its best when that dubtronica really comes out. The stand out track is ‘Dub Yalil'. It’s a slow one and it smoulders. Over its eight minutes, it builds and builds, first with drones and overlapping clarinets, then with drum loops, tabla and Arabic percussion. The bass comes in, with an incredibly simple but absolutely perfect stomach-wobbling bassline, and then the accordion, sounding just like a South Asian harmonium. Natacha’s voice soars in, over, across and through. And it continues like that, the layers increasing in their depth and complexity, a spot-on balance of Arabic dub, the styles making a great marriage. The track is marred slightly by Natacha’s opening verses, taken directly from the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer). Musically, it works wonderfully, but the use of the text and the melody of the adhan in this context is quite ethically unsound. I think today, they may not have included that bit. That aside, ‘Dub Yalil’ is such an excellent track and a triumph of world dubtronica.

Natacha eventually left TGU and went on to have a really successful solo career, often focusing most closely on those Egyptian classical styles. Everything comes around though, and she has been playing with them again quite a bit recently together with a few other original members. They will be playing a gig together, along with Nick Page/Dubulah’s Dub Colossus at the Islington Assembly Hall on 18th May – I hope I’ll catch them, and you, there!

095: Magic & Mayhem, by Afro Celt Sound System

Afro Celt Sound System (United Kingdom)
Magic & Mayhem (1999)
12 tracks, 41 minutes
YouTube playlist

You’ve heard hidden tracks before, pieces of music that are ‘hidden’ in an album in some way, usually just by being left unlisted on the packaging, sometimes after a long silence at the end, and sometimes with some tech wizardry, like being placed before the music starts. Well, this one is the next level: a whole hidden album.

Magic & Mayhem is a real-time strategy video game from 1999, with a sort of high-fantasy theme. Video games were only just being able to include full soundtracks of pre-recorded music (as opposed to programmed music that is ‘played’ by the game itself with MIDI or similar sound chips), and the makers of Magic & Mayhem leapt at the chance to utilise this ability to its fullest, and they hired pioneering world dubtronica outfit the Afro Celt Sound System to create their score. As you played through the game, it was to the grooves of the Afro Celts. So far, so relatively normal. But it turned out that if you stuck the CD-ROM of the game into your CD player instead of your computer, it played the soundtrack there as well, all twelve tracks just as it would a normal album. I’ve never heard of that technique before, but it’s a great idea.

And, because it’s the Afro Celt Sound System, the music is great too. Fitting the game, the tracks are divided up into three realms with four tracks each: there’s music for Celtic, Greek and medieval worlds. Each has its own feeling, of course. The Celtic tracks are classic ACSS with uilleann pipes and whistles; the Greek ones feature harps and guitars; and the medieval tracks, perhaps a bit oddly, are a bit more new-agey, focussing on electronic instruments but using ancient-sounding scales. From those bases, everything is given rich layers of luscious synthscapes, appropriately Afro-Celtic drum loops and an overall dubtronic production treatment. This soundtrack is maybe not as adventurous in terms of the amount of international influences and guest musicians as on their standard albums, but the quality is great nevertheless and it shows a different and little-known side to the group that went on to be so successful.

Magic & Mayhem wasn’t the only time ACSS combined their music and video games with hidden content. Their second album proper, Volume 2: Release, also from 1999, did the opposite of Magic & Mayhem: it was a standard audio album, but when you opened it on a computer, you could install a small game called Noodle, in which you could remix the track ‘Whirl-y-Reel’ from the group’s first album. The way it worked was really interesting, each instrument was represented by a little moving graphic, and each played a set of loops that you could mix and match, bring to the fore and let fade away, and even save your favourite configurations. The amount of hours I sunk into Noodle as a kid is probably too embarrassing (and too long ago) to tally. And again, this was hidden: you wouldn’t know about it until you tried it in your computer and opened that unknown and suspicious .exe.

So hurrah for hidden content and hurrah for the pioneering mix of world music and video games – it still doesn’t happen enough. More please, but until then, let’s enjoy this little-known gem of an album, hidden perhaps too well.

086: Lost in Spice, by Kamel Nitrate

Kamel Nitrate (United Kingdom/Portugal)
Lost in Spice (2003)
10 tracks, 54 minutes (2019 remastered version)
Spotify • iTunes

Kamel Nitrate were, until not too long ago, a group that seemed to come and go in a blink. They had one great album, played around for about a year or two and then seemed to disappear almost completely, save for a couple of remixes here and there. But they left a deep impression on me.

The Kamels as they were then were a bunch of musicians orbiting around the nucleus of producer and multi-instrumentalist Tony Marrison and the excellently named DJ Nelson Dilation. Together with a group of excellent musicians including Portuguese singer Maria João Branco, they created a sound that epitomises dubtronica for me. Not only does it have dub and electronica in heavy doses, but the influences are global. Every continent is represented musically in some way or another, whether as samples that drive the direction of whole tracks, to something as small as a chromatic passing note in an organ solo.

The resulting album, Lost in Spice, is a proper party record, and an annual sound of the summer. Since getting the album in 2003 (or perhaps a little earlier – if memory serves me right, me dad got a hold of an early copy direct from the source), this album was never too far away from my speakers.

It took all the way until 2016 for Kamel Nitrate to rise again, with Tony Marrison rallying some worldwide friends to create the sequel he had always envisioned in the form of Lebanon Elevator. I even got a personal thanks in the album sleeve for the support, too, which was nice.

And then, as a lovely surprise, Lost in Spice came back around – they released a remastered and slightly extended version just earlier this year. The original mixes were lost to the hard drives of time, so Tony had to painstakingly put everything together piece-by-piece and it sounds lovely and sparkly for that. It’s great to get to appreciate it all over again, and I really hope this re-release gets this classic album the wider listenership it always deserved.

082: Blackhouse, by Peatbog Faeries

Peatbog Faeries (United Kingdom)
Blackhouse (2015)
10 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

The old adage is ‘never judge a book by its cover,’ but book covers serve an important function of enticing you to pick it up and give it a go – they are made to be judged, it’s their whole point. I don’t have a problem with the cover of Blackhouse, it doesn’t particularly stir me either way. But I will admit that I was put off from giving the Peatbog Faeries a go for a long time, just from their band name alone. It’s such a stereotypical name of what I imagine would be a proper crusty, quite bad folk band. I guess it’s supposed to be self-aware in that way, but not Jim-aware, so I wrote them off.

I was wrong. There’s not an inch of crust on them. It is folk music at its very heart, so I got that right at least – most of the tracks are based on self-penned reels and jigs and all that sort of stuff, replete with highland bagpipes, whistles and fiddles. As soon as that first track, ‘Is This Your Son?’ hits the speakers, though, those doubts disappeared. It doesn’t start with wholesome fiddlry or earnest twangitude: it starts with a dirty sawtooth synth wave, some apocalyptic drums and a deadly bassline. This isn’t ale drinkers in kilts with a sideline in toffee and shortbread sales (although they might be some of those things) – this is The Prodigy! Then the fiddles kick and it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Throughout Blackhouse, Peatbog Faeries prove themselves to be like a punkier, less Afro-ish Afro Celt Sound System, with its hard rock and deep electronica elements all undergirded by Celtic melodies and energies. A lot of this wouldn’t be out of place at a cyberpunk night, and it’s sure to get you bouncing. It isn’t as unrelenting as the opening track may have you expect; there’s some gentler pieces scattered here and there with a chill-out vibe. I think I personally would prefer it to keep banging 100% of the time, but the slower tracks aren’t bad and don’t necessarily disrupt the flow – I just like dancing hard when I can.

I’ve had opportunities to see Peatbog Faeries quite a few times over the years at festivals and such, but never took them due to the name thing, and I’ve not managed to see them since. I imagine that they’d be rocking. I’ll have to update you if I ever do catch them live. Until then, remember: judge books by their covers if you must, but don’t be afraid to take a peek inside a dubiously-jacketed one now and again.

064: Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 04, by Youngsta & Hatcha (mix)

Youngsta & Hatcha (mix) (United Kingdom)
Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 04 (2006)
44 tracks, 123 minutes (2CD)
YouTube (Disc 1) • YouTube (Disc 2)

Writing this blog has made me realise how little I know about a lot of the music I love. This album is a good example, I think. I really like the music it contains, but I’m not sure I have enough of the correct vocabulary or knowledge of the style’s history to talk about it in the depth it deserves. I just have to talk about what it means to me, and why I love it so much – hopefully you’ll agree, and if you know more than I do, I always love to be corrected and educated!

This is dubstep from before it became a clichéd pop add-on: for a while, it felt like any pop song with a wobbly bass was classed as dubstep (I guess it’s like when any music with an acoustic guitar is called ‘folk’). But the style is much more than a bass synth with an LFO stuck on it. To me, dubstep is just dub without the reggae. It uses all of the same production qualities as the Jamaican style, but approaches them from a different direction, one informed by drum and bass, instrumental hip-hop and techno. Like dub, it takes these faster, dance-focused styles and turns the attention to the sounds themselves. Not that the focus shifts from dancing, of course, but this is more often a slower, more spacious groove. It’s darker than dub too, although in a way I can’t really describe – it feels a little dingy, in a good way.

This particular double album is from the Dubstep Allstars series, which saw eleven volumes between 2004 and 2013, showcasing the breadth of the style with a load of guest DJs on the mix. This one, Vol. 04, is mixed by Hatcha on Disc 1 and Youngsta on Disc 2. I like mix compilations, as they really give you the opportunity to revel in the vibe without having to take breaks at the end of the tracks: they’re basically ready-made club nights with only good music – score! On the whole, I think I prefer Hatcha’s contributions on this one, as his selections are more chilled-out and open. Great for very late nights.

Once again, this is a type of music that I’d love to hear more of and learn more about. Judging by the quality of these two mixes, I guess the place for me to start would be the other ten editions of the series!

037: Come Out, by Roughcut

Roughcut feat. Sesco D. (Germany)
Come Out (1996)
13 tracks, 51 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to stream this. AllMusic comes closest (you can play previews of all the tracks) and you can buy the CD second-hand for cheap on Discogs. Alternatively, hit me up and I’ll sort you out.

This will be an interesting one to write, because I know basically nothing about the band Roughcut, or this album. Did they have any more albums? Did their members go on to do other things? No idea, and the internet doesn’t help much either. The group themselves appear to be from Germany, and it sounds like the featured vocalist, Sesco D., has released some reggae albums under the name Jah Sesco, but that’s as much as I can find. All very mysterious.

What I can tell you about is the music itself. The mid-1990s were the boom time for world dubtronica – that mix of electronica and dub with influences and samples from all sorts of music from all over the world pioneered by groups such as Transglobal Underground and Suns of Arqa. Come Out…uh, came out right in the middle of that, and it’s a great example of it. There’s lots of influence from Indian music all over the album, from tabla and sarangi samples to vaguely ethnic-sounding melodic noodling, but there’s also bits of jungle or Bulgarian singing or African drumming here and there. It’s all held together by dark techno synths and beats, chest-rattling dub bass and Sesco D.’s everpresent ragga-ish vocals.

It sounds a little dated nowadays, because it is. Its mid-90s origins are obvious, but listen in the right ambience and it’s a gas – early morning near the end of a party, you can take what you want from it: pump it loud and you can keep dancing till the sun’s back up; play it nice and low, and even the faster, more beat-heavy tracks can be strangely soothing.

This album – and Roughcut in general – is an interesting but basically unknown artefact of a scene right at the beginning of its heyday. If you can track it down, the music speaks for itself – which is good, because nothing else does. I’d love to learn more about this, so please get in touch if you’re in the know!