1990s techno just trended on TikTok

Latest news from TikTok land. A user has posted about a misprinted vinyl edition of Taylor Swift's Speak Now (Taylor's Version). Instead of the dulcet tones of Pennsylvania's favourite country music escapee, it played the album Happy Land: A Compendium Of Electronic Music From The British Isles 1992-1996 Vol. 1. Quite the surprise.

I have to admit something. I know nothing about Taylor Swift's music. I have a good working knowledge of a lot of pop acts – Girls Aloud, Lil Nas X, Pet Shop Boys, Years & Years, Kylie Minogue, Crazy Frog. But Taylor's music leaves me cold, with her being my least preferred speed-themed music star after Rush, Fast Food Rockers and Hurry Styles. (Sorry.) 

TikTokker Rachel Hunter was the victim of an anomaly, like buying a packet of porridge and accidentally getting a vortex to an alternative universe in which glow sticks and tie-dyed t-shirts are the norm. She accidentally found herself listening to:

Xeper's Carceres Ex Novum, produced by the bloke from The Black Dog and featured on the first Trance Europe Express album.

Soul Vine (70 Billion People) which found Cabaret Voltaire embracing 90s techno while sampling TV show The Outer Limits.

Thunderhead's 11-minute acid ambient dub monster True Romance. This also appeared on Holistic Recordings' Paul Smith EP, which I don't think has anything to do with the similarly named lead singer of Maxïmo Park.

And more. There's Matthew Herbert, Aphex Twin, and Happy Land by Ultramarine starring the melty vocals of Robert Wyatt.

The original TikTok video is great. She focusses on a sinister Cabaret Voltaire sample. "There's 70 billion people on earth, where are they hiding," says the voice. Fair point. My local Spar is always dead so they're definitely not in there. Where are they? Inside the freezer cabinet? Hiding under the frozen peas? Good question, CabVol.

I once bought an album called Anthology by the 1990s techno act Pentatonik (listen to Green here). A lovely vinyl edition bought from an underground independent Manchester record shop, the name of which escapes me. I was gutted to find two sides were identical: clearly a misprint. I never got it replaced. I've still got it somewhere – it's probably worth, oooh, at least £5.24 now.

Big up to Above Board Distribution, who I hope will sell loads more copies of their British electronica compilation. I didn't expect 1990s techno to be trending on TikTok. That's like a penny farthing competing the Tour de France. Us old timers will never win, but, y'know, it's nice to be noticed sometimes.

Further Fats: Tiny promises that get me through (2016)

Further Fats: Are number one singles getting shorter? (TL;DR: #1s shorter Y/N?) (2022)

Best electronic albums of 2020: these thoughtful special mentions are a dream(ies)

Let's look at some more "special mentions", that awkward category of album which I profess to love but I still excluded from my Top 25. It's like saying you love your cat, but you eat all the Dreamies yourself. Tasty.

Let's start with Shadow of Fear (Mute), the first album for 26 years from Cabaret Voltaire. This newly solo incarnation had corroded industrial teeth: apparently the H in Richard H Kirk stands for Hardcore. Incidentally, read me raving about Kirk's Virtual State album, although I make it sound much cuter than it is.

This clutch of albums is among notes labelled "thoughtful". I swear I was on meth when I made these lists. I suppose there was something thoughtful in the sound of Req, who made his comeback with Calypso Dark (Seagrave), spinning out deeply beaty trippy sound-soups. Even more introspective was the dub-heavy sound system vibes of Al Wootton's infectious Witness (TRULE). A wonderful listen. "Come!"

Robert Hood has been pumping out the tunes these past few years, and he outdid himself on the metronomic assault that was Mirror Man (Rekids). His muscular minimalism is always produced with thought, but there was an extra frisson of meaning in track titles like Nothing Stops Detroit, Fear Not and Ignite A War. Speaking of minimalism, The Black Dog never seem to stop producing, and it was nice to see them taking a more simplistic approach for their Patreon-produced Fragments (Dust Science). Ambient abstraction with a tonne of heart.

Roy Of The Ravers is usually know for his sprawling acid workouts, so the distinctly non-acid retrospective White Line Sunrise II (Emotional Response) was an atmospheric, reflective, ambient treat – Bounc Erec is the softest of anthems. And if you need even more atmosphere, Clark's Daniel Isn’t Real OST (Deutsche Grammophon) had sotto piano in severe distress alongside apocalyptic strings worthy of its horror film source material.

Is that the end of the special mentions? Nope. Loads more to come. Flipping loads, mate.

 

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

A LoneLady among these dark Mancunian mills

LoneLady

Warp's wicked love affair with the guitar continued recently with LoneLady's debut album Nerve Up (LoneLady pictured above). I always wondered what happened in those smashed-window remnants of Manchester mills... well, here's the result.

Nerve Up is low-fi and immediate like the xx, and like that album it carries off the impossible task of sounding retro and fresh. Hear, if you will, the spirit of The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division and, to a larger extent I think, Gang Of Four, and yet it somehow explodes with potent energy.

Intuition is the immediate post-punk classic here, while If Not Now has the insistence of Tricky vocalist of Nicolette set to an unashamed '80s vibe. And she's not afraid to speed it up either, with the stomping disco of Army and the jangly, hand-clappy Early The Haste Comes.

Sharing a producer with My Bloody Valentine certainly helps LoneLady's album groove and ride and wiggle its way into your memory. Much of the record is reverbed to hell, I guess to reflect the huge mills in which it was created, and so adding a nicely apocalyptic touch.

My concern is if Warp can't convert this album into a sure-fire smash hit (the xx broke the top 40 last summer), what hope is there for any of their artists? I insist, dear reader, that this album is your guitar-rock purchase of the year.

Loscil

One for the guitar-phobic, now, and an album that is as equally atmospheric as LoneLady's long-player. Loscil's fifth album Endless Falls will envelope you, smother you and send your fuzzy mind spinning into that joyous place just before you drown with suffocated lungs.

Seven tracks of warm, glitchy looping ambience (nine tracks on the vinyl) make way for an epic closing piece of, um, spoken word poetry. Not a single string section, not the tiniest crackle, not a single moment of muffled melancholia is out of place on this beguiling ambient highlight of 2010 and a true successor to Global Communication's early work.