Smileys for miles: 10 rave culture classics that you should listen to immediately

Look at you, sat on your sofa watching repeats of the Nine O'Clock News from 1984 while munching seven-day old Jaffa cakes you found in the back of your cupboard. Jeez, what a loser. What you need, my lazy friend, are some rave-inspired records to ramp up your energy.

Here are ten tracks that, in their own individual way, bring alive the energy of rave music. Some are more directly connected to rave, and will transport you back to the days of poppers and smiley faces. Others owe some kind of historic debt to rave culture: even if you didn't experience rave back in the day, these tunes should still evoke the pill-popping hypercoloured club culture of yore. 

The highlighted links should open to a YouTube video of that track.

808 State: Cubik
Following the success of their blissful and balaeric Pacific State, 808 State put out a series of singles with a harder energy. Cubik was an unlikely top ten hit because of its cranky square-wave chords, alarmist emergency sirens and wild guitar shreds. There's footage online of young ravers partying to Cubik at Stone Roses' infamous Spike Island gig. Perfect for throwing (cuboid) shapes to.

Altern-8: Infiltrate 202
This was the masked mavericks' first hit single, and it peaked at number 28 in July 1991, just behind a new entry from Frankie Knuckles' The Whistle Song and just ahead of a new entry from Bomb The Bass's Winter In July. Crumbs, what a chart. And what an anthem. Simplistic, geometric breakbeat shapes which felt quite comical at the time, but laid some pretty serious groundwork in commercial chart rave.

Bicep: Glue
The video for Bicep's nostalgia-bazooka Glue interspersed images of abandoned rave sites with quote captions from ex-ravers. "Never had a comedown like that one," reminisces one caption. "Best days of my life," says another. "Off my box with four cans of Stella," interrupts one wag, ruining the mood. Joe Wilson's video was a perfect foil to the Bicep boys' heart-wrenching breakbeats. What a comedown. 

Chase & Status: Blind Faith
Like the Chemical Brothers, Chase & Status's partnership can be traced back to their time at Manchester university. And like the Chemical Brothers, the pair tread a neat line in roof-shattering beats. Blind Faith was a huge hit from their breakthrough album No More Idols. It was a tribute to grubby warehouse rave, bolstered by Loleatta Holloway-style live vocals from Yola. Chase & Status gonna work it out.

Fatboy Slim: Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat
Norman Cook has enjoyed number one success in various guises, and I had plenty of choice for this list. His creativity knows no bounds, whether it's a caveman turning into a chubby lad or Christopher Walken walkin' weird. Three decades after he learnt bass so he could join the Housemartins, Mr Slim released this modern classic in tribute to the fours states of raving. It's like Eat, Pray, Love but with poppers.

Klaxons: Atlantis To Interzone
They may have just been a bunch of London indie kids, but they brought "new rave" to the masses and singlehandedly re-popularised glowsticks with the gigging public. The awkwardly-named Atlantis To Interzone enjoyed radio support but, incredibly, failed to make a dent in the UK charts. A travesty. They followed-up this tribute to rave with an ace cover of Grace's Perfecto Records classic Not Over Yet.

Nia Archives: Off Wiv Ya Headz
I could have included A-Trak's iconic remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Heads Will Roll, but this junglist remix is irresistible. Nia Archives knocked up the track when trying to entertain crowds at Manchester's Warehouse Project, no mean feat considering the number of gurning bucket-hatters I've encountered there. If her name is new to you, dive into the Nia Archives archives immediately. Your rave heart will thank you.

Pet Shop Boys: Vocal
This might be a controversial one if you're a purist. And yes, I know Vocal has all the energy of your grandad pining for the days when the high street was all butchers and shoe shops. But this track has proper rave origins: the Boys say it was inspired by a clubbing venture in Brazil in the mid-1990s. They reflected this in the video by using footage from actual raves. A great tune from the domino dancers. 

Together: Hardcore Uproar
This John Carpenter-sampling classic was released on Pete Tong's brilliant FFRR label, It was the epitome of crossover rave bangers. That "ha-ha-hardcore uproar" voice? It's not a sample: it's just Suddi Raval's doing it directly into a mic. And the crowd cheers are from a Together live recording - in the background, you can hear Suddi shouting "yeeeeeah" to hype the crowd up. Rave to its very (hard)core.

The Streets: Weak Become Heroes
This list is almost in alphabetical order by artist, so we end up with The Streets. This is the best music act named after a road since, er, 'Don't Call Me Baby' hitmakers Madison Avenue. The downbeat Weak Become Heroes is Skinner's paeon to losing himself in the club and having a KFC afterwards. It's not a very ravey way to finish this list, but you can't have the smiley highs without the post-ecstasy crash.

Main blog picture: Altern-8

Further Fats: If it goes bleep, it may or may not be EDM (2013)

Further Fats: Just how DO you act at your first rave? (2019)

Plaything posters: Black Mirror goes full Designers Republic

The Plaything episode of Black Mirror is a love/hate letter to video games and artificial intelligence. It is also a tribute to the graphic genius of The Designers Republic.

In the episode, future national treasure Will Poulter plays visionary game designer Colin Ritman. At one point in the episode, we visit Ritman's office. His shelves are cluttered with framed posters featuring the work of the TDR graphic design studio, which is beloved of techno heads and console gamers.

While he talks to Lewis Gribben's games journalist character Cameron Walker, you can spot the following works:

○ An Aphex Twin poster
○ the cover of Polygon Window's Quoth
○ a rare poster for The Orb's Blue Room
○ the cover of Autechre's debut album Incunabula
○ a circle thing which I haven't identified yet
○ a "laugh vote die" poster referencing a previous Black Mirror episode
○ and, hidden behind Cameron, the cover of Warp's first volume of Artificial Intelligence.

In another shot, you can spot Autechre's album Amber.

There are The Designers Republic works elsewhere in this office. Notice the one with the pigtails? That's from a TDR takeover of Emigre magazine – issue 29, to be exact. The pigtailed mascot featured here is called Sissy. The poster further left with a similar colour scheme is a collage for the same publication and contains stream-of-consciousness gibberish such as "design or die!", "g7oba7 7anguag3 for th3 mazz3z" and a Sheffield '94 football ident.

On the same shelf, there's an impenetrable sheet of black and white logo designs. This is their Visual Symbolism Vol. 94 (1990-1994) collection of "new and used" logos which contains Pop Will Eat Itself icons, Sun Electric's typeface, and a tonne of visual blaps saying things like "have a nice day" and "e by gum" and "I love my DR".

There is more, of course, but if I delve further into this, I'll fall into some kind of Black Mirror plot matrix and I'll grown USB sticks for fingers or something. Anyway, it's smashing to see such an iconic design outfit represented on the telly.

Further Fats: The Designers Republic vs B12 Records – are the 1990s dead? (2009)

Further Fats: Chosen Words – D is for Design (2010)

Keeping it current with a former Man-Machine: An interview with Wolfgang Flür

I interviewed Wolfgang Flür for the latest edition of Electronic Sound magazine.

Flür’s new album Times features Boris Blank out of Yellow, Thomas Vangarde out of Daft Punk, Peter Hook out of New Order, Juan Atkins out of, er, Juan Atkins, and more besides.

We talked about German mythology, the passing of time, songwriting inspiration during his Kraftwerk days, and his partnership with the brilliant Peter Duggal, who joined us for the interview. I was chuffed that Peter was with us: it gave an interesting spin to the piece.

Wolfgang is, of course, most famous for being a member of Kraftwerk, a group I think are better than sliced bread AND bees knees. This is the first time I've interviewed someone inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A lot of pressure, I guess, although I'm not the type of person to be starstruck.

While researching for the interview, I saw a video of Wolfgang gently complaining about a previous Electronic Sound interview in which they led with him being a member of Kraftwerk. This is the most famous thing about him, but it got me wondering. Could you really get away with not mentioning the K word?

So I took a risk. He may not have noticed, but I deliberately didn't mention Kraftwerk for the entire interview. The name did not pass my lips. It felt like a dereliction of journalistic duty, disrespectful even, but my reasoning was calculated:

(a) The theme of the album is "times" and I wanted our conversation to be rooted in the here-and-now and his latest work.

(b) There is probably nothing more to say about his involvement with a band he departed nearly four decades ago.

(c) He was going to mention the K word anyway, which he did to beautiful effect as you can see in the article.

I salute you, Wolfgang and Peter. Times well spent. The article can be read in issue 124 of Electronic Sound available at all good retailers, or, via subscription, on the Electronic Sound website.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: J is for Juan Atkins (2010)

Further Fats: Breaking – Kraftwerk legend has important message about Electronic Sound (2010)

When monks dropped the hottest track of 1991

When Enigma' Sadeness (Part 1) topped the singles chart in early 1991, it was confusing and weird. Like ravioli, which are pillows you can eat.

The song was sexy and sinful, which left the religious 17-year-old Fats quaking in my cassock. Even more transgressively, they spelled 'sadness' wrong, which was enough to make my communion wafers crumble.

The devil did try to stop Enigma. A week before Sadeness topped the charts, Iron Maiden scored an unlikely number one with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter. Lead singer Bruce Dickenson said he wrote the song to "scare the living daylights out of Cliff Richard". Sadeness knocked Slaughter off its perch, but it was then in turn knocked off the top spot by Queen's bombastic Innuendo, although whether Mercury's lot were on the side of God or the Devil remains a mystery.

It's tempting to write off Sadeness as a novelty song, like Mr Blobby, the Crazy Frog or anything by Phil Collins. It had Latin and sadism and foghorns and the Bible. One reviewer called it "easy listening sex music" – which sounds either brilliant or awful, I'm not quite sure which. But it far outstretched novelty songwriting, and the parent album MCMXC a.D. was a brilliant piece of experimental weirdness. 

The monks are, of course, the most memorable thing about the track. Listen to them, carping on about angels and heaven and stuff. At least, I think that was the subject matter– it was all in Latin. This is not as unique as you might think – even Little Mix have had a middle-eight in Latin.

Sadeness also sampled James Brown and Soul II Soul for its beats. Sampling was rife when Enigma charted at the tail end of 1990. Technology was super limited back then, so producing any kind of sample of note was an achievement. And they were monks so they probably didn't even have plug sockets.

The "Part One" of Sadeness has always intrigued me, as it suggested that a Part Two would follow. This didn't happen until 2016, when Enigma finally released Sadeness (Part II), based around Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and featured on their eighth studio album The Fall Of A Rebel Angel. At this rate, there will be a third part in 2049.

My track Sophie's Faves, recorded with Fritz von Runte and featured on the Sleeve Notes album, includes Enigma as one of its various musical flavours. Its inclusion is very deliberate: I'm no longer religious, but those monks still make my halo wibble.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: Q is for Queen (2010)

Further Fats: Dance music: it's all so wrong (2019)