Blogariddims 13 / Electronicack : 1

We’ve dragged ourselves out of hibernation to bring you this mix, the first Blogariddims of the new year. For those of you who missed the last six months or so of podcasts, Nick Gutterbreakz has come out of semi-retirement to give you the lowdown on the first 12 episodes (scroll down), and I’d definitely recommend signing up and starting at the beginning. You can subscribe or download individual episodes here, and find out how to use podcasts here.

This episode features a mix that I’ve been saving for the right moment. A set myself and Slug recorded way back in May 2000, it features a selection of late 90s electronica tunes, from a time when we were actively involved in the scene and were DJng on the radio and gigging on a more regular basis.

Since we haven’t featured any of this genre in previous mixes, and it’s a bit of a speciality of myself and Slug's, I’m going to use this opportunity to address a couple of longstanding gripes... The first concerns the genre name itself, ‘Electronicack’ is a pisstake title inspired by the derision this genre often attracts from so-called ‘serious’ music critics, but it’s based on the term we usually use to describe this kind of music: ‘electronica’, or occasionally, ‘dancefloor electronica’. For years I used this term with no realisation that it had a competitor, but when I started using the internet for something other than email in the mid-late 90’s, I discovered to my horror, that the noxious acronym ‘IDM’ had somehow stolen the title. Now, I know the whole history – first coined on the Hyperreal board in the early 90s and inspired by WARPs ‘Artificial Intelligence’ series etc, but it seems to me that ‘IDM’ really came into common usage after the release of Aphex’s ‘Come to Daddy’ EP and the ’Richard D James’ LP, along with the influx of trans-Atlantic fans and the maturation of the US electronic scene.

Lacking all the charm of its cheesy half brother, the Rephlex coined ‘Braindance’, ‘IDM’, like ‘Intelligent jungle’ is one of those terms designed purely to enhance a sense of superiority on the part of it’s aficionados, and it emphasises a sense of schism from the dancefloor roots of the genre. Its no coincidence that post ’98 (apart from a few stalwarts) this music essentially went up its own arse, specifically, in my opinion as a result of divorcing itself from the sense of real-world context that involvement in a club-based scene brings. The term ‘electronica’ on the other hand, though a bit more vague does make a connection with the rich heritage of Electronic music from the 50’s onwards, encompasses both the experimental and the functional aspects of the music, and seems an apt title to give to a genre that is primarily characterised by the use of electronic instrumentation rather than (recognisable) samples – plus it isn’t completely obnoxious and doesn’t make you sound like a pretentious twat when you use it. So basically, ‘IDM’ is a dirty word around here, and to be fair, myself and Slug played with or met many of the leading lights of the scene between 98-2003, and I have to say, I never once heard any producer or DJ use the term, so this rant may not be pure hubris on my part.

Now, my other gripe is slightly more prosaic, and concerns the low expectations people seem to have when it comes to DJ’s who work in this genre. I’ve lost count of the amount of live sets and mixes I’ve heard that we either full of train wrecks, or featured no mixing at all - and when this is pointed out, the response is invariably something along the lines of “It doesn’t matter if this music is mixed or not”. I find this attitude completely baffling considering the roots of electronica lies in the mutation of late 80’s/early 90’s acid house and techno, and probably the two most influential labels in the genre, WARP and Rephlex both started out as dance labels. When the scene splintered in the mid/late 90’s, there were still 3 main strains identifiable by their derivation from either a techno/electro, jungle or hip-hop template, and a huge amount of material still qualified as ‘dance’ music despite the fact that it may not necessarily have been made with the dancefloor in mind. Even with deliberately downtempo material, there is still in my mind a functional relationship with the listener – to entice them to lie down rather than step up, and as the music is generally sequenced and quantized – why not mix it?

If anyone’s to blame for the devaluation of the role of the DJ in electronica circles it has to be the audience. Of course the fact that newbie DJ’s don’t really have a chance to learn their art in club environments doesn’t help (this is something that dubstep seems to be helping remedy – check out this mix from Ben UFO), but, as in many fields that straddle the line between the commercial and the aesthetic, without expectations of excellence from the audience, there is little or no motivation to produce something excellent. As a result good electronica mixes are like hen’s teeth. This is a real shame in my opinion. Electronica is unique in that it’s the blob of the post-rave genre’s, endlessly absorbing and regurgitating other styles, which makes DJng it a particularly rewarding experience. If genre mixing is monochromatic painting in shades of 1 colour, then mixing electronica is like having a full palette of colours. Sure it might be a bit more difficult than mixing music that’s been made specifically with the DJ in mind, but that’s also what makes it so interesting...

So, having just pointed out that most electronica fans don’t demand enough from their DJ’s, i’ll expect you all to be hyper-critical of this next mix, an hour of late 90’s material which is fairly representative of the kind of sets we used to play out back then. Its not 100% perfect. The mixing and sequencing is all pretty tight, and there’s a few really nice blends, but I’m not a totally convinced about all the tunes (in fact, a couple of them have been ignominiously dumped in second hand record shops over the past few years). We were caught up in DJ fever at the time, constantly looking for specific textures or variations on themes to feed the insatiable appetites of our sets. Still, its a solid enough set, and I think its aged pretty well, and in case your wondering, it was recorded back to back live on the decks and its never been available anywhere else – there’s no recycling in this podcast!

Droid + Slug - Blogariddims 13/Electronicack : 1 (87mb.mp3)


1. The threat of Melkur - Roger Limb/The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - BBC (Doctor Who – The music LP) (1983)
2. Ambulance - Sighn - Unreleased (Sketches and Draughts demo) (1999)
3. While (Chris Moore) - Trap - Chocolate Industries (Lock EP) (1998)
4. Babel - Shaman - Elektrolux (B sides, the code of B-Haviour) (1998)
5. Autechre - Are Y are We - Warp (we R are Why EP) (1996)
6. Herbert - Deeper - Phono (Parts 1, 2 and 3 LP) (1996)
7. Tura - Reishi - Likemind (Likethemes EP) (1995)
8. Autechre - Rpeg - Warp (EP 7.1) (1999)
9. Mike Flowers Pops - 1999 (Cylob mix) - Lo (Mike Flowers meets Cylob/Orbital - 1999/Chime Remixes) (1999)
10. Mr. Scruff - So Long (Future Homosapiens mix) - Ninjatune (Honeydew EP) (1999)
11. Flanger - Music to begin with - N-tone (Templates EP1) (1999)
12. Chaos A.D. - Davey’s safety lamp - Rephlex (Buzz Caner LP) (1998)
13. Kyoshi Izumi - Cheaper cosmos – Rephlex (Effect Rainbow EP) (1997)
14. Aemic - A1 - Musik Aus Strom (Beta 10” EP) (1999)
15. Fink - Ever since.. (Hefner mix) - N-tone (Ever Since_ EP) (2000)
16. Lackluster - Suntrap - Defocus (foc 349 EP) (2000)
17. Autechre – Yessland - Warp (Cichlisuite pt. 1) (1997)

1. The threat of Melkur - Roger Limb/The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - BBC (Doctor Who – The music LP) (1983)
2. Ambulance - Sighn - Unreleased (Sketches and Draughts demo) (1999)
3. While (Chris Moore) - Trap - Chocolate Industries (Lock EP) (1998)
4. Babel - Shaman - Elektrolux (B sides, the code of B-Haviour) (1998)

We’ve gotten into a bit of a habit of starting sets with tunes from the Radiophonic Workshop, and it all started with this LP which was given to me by a good friend in 1996 in return for a promise of mixtape featuring the Doctor Who theme (still pending ten years later!). Roger Limb’s short burst of analogue fanfare (opening with a classic dub siren sound effect) sets the tone nicely for the real first tune, an unreleased Ambulance track from a minidisc demo we were given in late 99. I’ve written at some length about this Dublin duo in the past, and we’ve featured their work (solo or individually) on two other mixes for this site, but just to stress the point – Ambulance are probably the best electronic act ever to come out of Ireland, and I’d strongly recommend picking up their LP on Planet Mu, and their releases on Front End Synthetics.

This is one of their many unreleased tunes, and its quite atypical of their work, as its based around fairly simple rhythm and is dominated by vocal samples from 70’s horror/sci-fi movie Demonseed. Minidisc compression mars this recording slightly, and I’ve been told on several occasions that it’s not one of their favourite tunes, but nonetheless, I think its simplicity works nicely. We drift fairly quickly into the keyboards and crunchy rhythms of ‘Trap’ by ‘While’ on U.S. label Chocolate Industries. Now dominated by straight up hip-hop oriented artists, Chocolate Industries put out some solid releases during the Indian summer of post WARP electronica, ‘While’ being one of the artists who managed to avoid the derivative self-indulgence that marred a lot of the music that was produced around the period this was released.

Haven’t got much to say about this ‘Babel’ tune. From a fairly homogenous set of Eps/12s on Elektrolux (most of which have been sold on at this stage), its a solid enough slice of German Electro, well produced with some nice 808 kicks, and the right kind of atmosphere, but its basic function here is to act as the straight man for the more charismatic ‘While’ and Autechre tunes to bounce off, and it serves that purpose well enough.

5. Autechre - Are Y are We - Warp (we R are Why EP) (1996)
6. Herbert - Deeper - Phono (Parts 1, 2 and 3 LP) (1996)
7. Tura - Reishi - Likemind (Likethemes EP) (1995)

The first of three Autechre tracks gets chopped out of ‘Shaman’, A 1996 12” from WARP, which was available (I think) by mail-order only. This is a perfect example of AEs more dancefloor oriented work following on from a string of knockout 12’s like ‘anti’, ‘anvil vapre’ and ‘garbage’ with echoes of their earlier ‘Incunabula’ origins. This tune was always in our bag back when we played electronic sets, as it’s got a great combination of solid percussion and sweet melody, which makes it very handy for mixing.

Herbert is probably our least favourite of all Matthew Herbert’s guises, and I think this is the last record we ever bought by him, as he went off into even more housey directions with his later releases under his own name, especially his collaborations with vocalist Dani Siciliano, which I particularly detest. Some of his genre tunes are ok though, and this track probably represents the furthest we will ever go in that direction as we’ve never been not big into house at all (though we are big fans of Moodyman!). I wouldn’t slate Matt Herbert completely though. His earlier ‘Radioboy’, Wishmountain and ‘Doctor Rockitt’ stuff is nearly all gold.

Tura aka Plaid, with a tune first released on small independent ‘Likemind’ in 95, and then later re-released by WARP on the ‘Trainer’ LP. This is a mood-swinging epic of a track, and the more techno oriented sound seems to suit their style nicely. Probably one of the best things they’ve ever done, and its funny that the two Plaid tunes I like best were both released under other names – this and their brilliant jungle tune ‘Stromboli’ under the pseudonym ‘Kushti’ for the first release on the short lived Octopus records. Gotta love that phased amen!

8. Autechre - Rpeg - Warp (EP 7.1) (1999)
9. Mike Flowers Pops - 1999 (Cylob mix) - Lo (Mike Flowers meets Cylob/Orbital - 1999/Chime Remixes) (1999)
10. Mr. Scruff - So Long (Future Homosapiens mix) - Ninjatune (Honeydew EP) (1999)

Autechre pop up again here with the shambolic, and (in my opinion) funky as fuck ‘Rpeg’ from the first of their two part ‘EP 7’. Shuffling along at 130bpm or so with a big dose of squelchy percussion, this is the kind of track I love to drop in a mix, and Id particularly love to hear on a dancefloor. I’ve always thought that these EPs are a kind of water line that marked the point where AE went off the deep end in terms of accessibility and compositional method. Unlike LP 5 which preceded this, there’s nary a glimpse of the qualities which marked their earlier sound, but at the same time they haven’t quite reached the level of abstractness which can make their music so challenging (and occasionally frustrating) to their listeners.

This next one’s a bit of a curio. Cylob remixing Mike Flowers Pops, resulting in a fairly bare arrangement of beats sound effects, and fairly incongruous horns. This tune is only here because I came across a sequence of mixes when practising that led from the Autechre, to a Req tune from his ‘Daily Breaks Ep‘s’ on Skint, to this track, but unfortunately I forgot the Req when we recorded this, and, there was little I could do to fix it in the middle of the set!

The horns of the Cylob remix left us with a bit of a problem, as they’re not exactly common in electronica. We ended up resorting to a Mr. Scruff tune to get a mix in, and even though it’s not the worst, I’m not exactly enamoured with it either. I used to kind of admire the guy for his crate digging abilities and for his solid production, as his tunes were always a handy way to bring something different into a set – but looking back on his work now – he really does represent the worst excesses of Ninjatune naffness doesn’t he? Not that Ninja didn’t put out some great stuff (there’s two other excellent tunes from ‘N-tone’ on this mix), but the preponderance of lowest common denominator and dogmatically sample based releases really grew tiresome to us around the time this was recorded, and this was one of the last Ninja 12s we ever bought.

11. Flanger - Music to begin with - N-tone (Templates EP1) (1999)
12. Chaos A.D. - Davey’s safety lamp - Rephlex (Buzz Caner LP) (1998)
13. Kyoshi Izumi - Cheaper cosmos – Rephlex (Effect Rainbow EP) (1997)

Things get slowed down here with Flanger’s aptly named ‘Music to begin with’. One of our tendencies ‘back in the day’ was always to try and split our sets into 2 or 3 different BPMs, mainly because if you’re playing for 3 or 4 hours on the radio or in a club, its good to change the pace now and again and get some fresh tunes in (I think the split in this set is 138BPM for the first section and 120bpm for this section). Consequently, tunes like this one are a godsend, as you can do a ‘cheap’ mix and simply start when the last tune ends, thus changing BPM without it sounding too shit.

Don of the Cologne school of electronica, Burnt Friedmann teams up with the super prolific Atom Heart (whom I think I've discussed before) to form 'Flanger'. Friedmann is an extremely talented producer, with a foot in the worlds of Jazz, dub and electronic music and the organic style of this EP sounded completely fresh to our ears when it came out (and I think its stood up very well to the test of time). Friedmann has gone on to collaborate with Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit on a series of releases, which came out on his own ‘Non-place’ records, and are, if I recall correctly, excellent - although the Flanger LP which followed up the Templates EPs was a little to jazzy for my liking.

The next tune has Squarepusher written all over it. Unsurprising really seeing as this is his work under an alias, taken from a triple LP of early demos and unreleased tracks. It’s a decent album, bit rough on the production side of things, but features a couple of killer acid hardcore type tunes, as well as this little piano and bass led gem, which slides fairly sveltely out of the Flanger.

This section (my favourite in the set) wraps up with another release from Rephlex, ‘Kyoshi Izumi’ (whom I know absolutely nothing about), with a weird excursion into folk acid that comes whistling into the Chaos AD at about 39:30, ambles into a chaotic breakdown, shifts up a gear into a fairly monotonous breakbeat, before pulling it all together again with a magnificent bit of electro-squelch melody. Very reminiscent of the kind of stuff Patrick Pulsinger was putting out on his ‘Cheap’ records at around the same time.

14. Aemic - A1 - Musik Aus Strom (Beta 10” EP) (1999)
15. Fink - Ever since.. (Hefner mix) - N-tone (Ever Since… EP) (2000)
16. Lackluster - Suntrap - Defocus (foc 349 EP) (2000)
17. Autechre – Yessland - Warp (Cichlisuite pt. 1) (1997)

There’s a sudden drop to half-time here courtesy of Michael Fakesch and Andre Estermann the former of which is a founder of MAS along with his funkstorung partner Chris De Luca, one of the more prestigious Electronica labels to emerge in the mid-late 90’s. Their releases always seemed to have a high level of attention to detail, and this one is no exception – three sweet above-par downtempo tunes pressed onto a beautiful 10” picture disc designed by DR.

Fink first popped his head up at about the same time Flanger did with the ‘Frontside bluntside’ Ep on N-tone, with more jazzy electronica styles, though slightly tuffer than Flanger’s efforts. This is a pretty solid, (though a bit loungey) number, and its all about the ‘Ever since I was a kid I collected something…’ sample (which Im sure most of you can relate to). For years I thought this bit of dialogue was Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2 ranting about his woes to Mel and Danny, but no – according to discogs I’m wrong! I guess I should’ve watched the whole film to confirm, but that even my unrivalled dedication doesn’t stretch that far…

There’s a lot of music in this set that we have since lost interest in and sold on – DeFocus, the late 90s reincarnation of the legendary Clear records, is one of those labels that has been entirely wiped from our collection. I admit, we got swept along at the time and bought their first 10 or so 12s, and on a textural level, some of them were pretty handy for Djng, but listening back to them a few years ago, they just sounded empty and derivative – kind of a ‘Plaid-lite’ sound. That said, this Lackluster track isn’t that bad, and the 12” its taken from is probably one of the better things the highly prolific Esa Ruoho has ever put out.

Autechre get another peep in as they’re mixed out of the Lackluster right at the end of the set with a tune taken from the two-part ‘Chiclisuite’ EP. There’s been enough AE worship in this post already, so I’m not going to add any more, simply to say that anyone who professes to like electronic music but doesn’t give props to AE for at least some of their work is either a) woefully ignorant b) a moron or c) deliberately adopting a contrary stance – or a combination of all three! (And if that’s not a controversial way to end this post, I don’t know what is. ;) )

Next Blogarididms is up in 2 weeks or so - Monday 22nd of Jan. Sincere apologies to everyone for being a bit slow on getting this post up, but once again there was a bit of a mis-scheduling, so its pretty fortunate that we even got the Podcast up on Monday at all!

Till next time.