A Full On Guide to Full On: Eternal's Mind Odyssey and Felix's It Will Make Me Crazy

Next up on Full On: Edition One is Eternal's Mind Odyssey. 

Eternal was Melbourne club promoter Mark James, who set up the Eternal project with uber massive DJ legend and drag racer Carl Cox. 

Mind Odyssey came out on Warp Records in the UK, with a catalogue number WAP 27 which places it at around the same time as Polygon Window's Surfing On Sine Waves. This makes him proper techno royalty.

Pop this in your ears:

This Eternal is not to be confused with 1990s r'n'b popsters Eternal who wanted to "be the only one, the only one". 

Having said that, Mark has his pop side: he was in a band called Bass Culture with his then girlfriend Gina Gardiner, who later had a big Eurovision hit as Gina G with the appalling Ooh Aah... Just a Little Bit. Gosh, is this what it's like to write a gossip column?

Eternal would be the star of this blog post, but next up on the Full On track listing is Felix. 

The track is Felix's second biggest hit It Will Make Me Crazy, remixed by Rollo of Faithless fame. Listen here:

If Mark James is techno royalty, in the world of Euro-flavoured progressive house Felix is even bigger: a huge pulsating techno God larger than the known universe.

That's not to say Felix was more successful: James' career is huge. But the Felix sound summed up the Full On experience for me. Big cheesy chords, big housey vocals, super-sharp snare clicks, moody minor chords, simplicity throughout. 

It has to be said, this did sound a lot like his biggest hit Don't You Want Me, and the album was very samey. But if it was a formula, it was such a satisfying formula, and I got the impression that a lot of people were copying the Felix sound. Including me at the time on my little Korg keyboard.

Stylistically, Felix's sound isn't a hundred miles away from 2 Unlimited, whose career was taking off at the time of Full On. 2 Unlimited were much bouncier and stoopider, and had far less credibility. 

The lyrics are hugely different for a start. Here's the words for It Will Make Me Crazy:

It will make me crazy!
It will make me crazy!
It will make me crazy!
It will make me crazy!

And here are the lyrics to 2 Unlimited's Get Ready For This:

Techno!
Techno!
Techno!
Techno!

See? Totally different. 

Incidentally, and sorry to keep bouncing between the two Felix singles, but Don't You Want Me hit the UK top ten twice, and then charted a third time when it was used in a Tango advert. 

Felix was born in Chelmsford in Essex, as was Squarepusher, Ceephax Acid Crew, Hazell Dean, Sarah from St Etienne, Grayson chuffing Perry, and, er, the drummer from McFly. There's something in the water in Chelmsford.

What does this all say about Full On and its significance for 1990s dance music? I dunno: I stopped paying attention around about Gina G.

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Read the Full On series in, er full.

Read the Full On introduction explaining what the heck this is all about.

A Full On Guide to Full On: introduction

When Kylie Minogue moved to Deconstruction Records to release Confide In Me, she gained an indie credibility entirely absent from her Stock Aitken and Waterman past.

And yet, Deconstruction was no less pop. Co-founded by Mike Pickering of M People, they had the big piano anthems of Black Box, K-Klass and Bassheads and M People. Taking on Kylie seemed an entirely sensible choice.

There was one compilation, however, which cemented Deconstruction's underground credentials. It was Full On: Edition One, subtitled "a year in the life of house music". This was Decon sticking a massive flag on the moon, and that moon was underground dance music. Not that moons can be made from abstract nouns, but you get the idea.

The cover design wasn't great. Here is its Discogs image in all its low-resolution glory. It looks like the front page of a financial company's glossy annual report. "Yah, Damien says the VAT changes have had a peripheral effect on out-sourcing but the bottom line remains pretty solid."

I shouldn't knock the designers, Farrow Design. They have pretty solid credentials, helping define the look of post-Richie Manics, Orbital's 20th anniversary, and recent Pet Shop Boys.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about whether navy goes with burnt orange. I'm here to talk about the music.

Full On came out in 1992, which made it pre-cool-Kylie but post-Italo-house. 2 Unlimited had taken the charts by storm with their lowest common denominator "techno" sound. Full On had a foot in similar bouncy Euro-house, but there was something so much more listenable about it.

It had Felix and Usura banging out thumping anthems for blocky pre-Windows-95 visuals. It had an early appearance from Justin 'Lionrock' Robertson', laying an early warning shot for the rise of big beat. And it had a nascent appearance from someone who, five years later, would score one of the most memorable top ten singles of all time.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to analyse one track a day and I'm going to call it a Full On Guide to Full On. I'll do two tracks a day if I don't have much to write about. Three if I'm really struggling. You can see the complete track listing on Discogs.

Don't worry: if you never listened to this album, you should still enjoy this. I'm going to shine a light on 1990s dance music by, er, deconstructing this Deconstruction album. At least, I hope so: I haven't written any of it yet.

Stay tuned for the Full On Guide to Full On.

Read the Full On series in, er full.

Read the Full On introduction explaining what the heck this is all about.

Massive Attack got soul but Ceephax got swing(ing lampshades)

Hey, look, there is some albums what just come out!

Ceephax Acid Crew

I'm swinging from the bloody lightshade.

United Acid Emirates, the new album from Ceephax Acid Crew, has got me prancing around my mansion like a brain damaged pixie. It's so lurid and colourful, like being stuck in an 8 bit Meg And Mog cartoon.

The drooling, looping trippiness of the acid, splattered all over this album, is a constant, giddy joy. The opener Cedric's Sonnet is a sharp, spikey melodic number reminiscent of his brother Squarepusher in Welcome To Europe mode. Castilian is dragged kicking and screaming by a full-on, bullying bass drum, while the dated click rhythm of Life Funk reminds me of Felix-era house music.

This is, however, not a stupid album. It's a serious step forward for Ceephax, where he demonstrates his various skills at chugging 80s techno anthems (Topaz) or off-kilter chord arrangements (Commuter). And all this with plenty of squelching acid moistness. Highly recommended.

Massive Attack

Are you bothered about a new Massive Attack album?  Of course you are: I can't believe you asked me that, you idiot.

Heligoland has finally, um, landed. It's a full seven years after the band's previous studio album ("If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly," says their MySpace page) and nearly 20 years after their highly influential debut Blue Lines. And actually, it's that memory of Blue Lines that I can hear on Heligoland.

Yes, there are guest vocalists (which The Guardian had down as almost unique in the dance world, despite the Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim and Unkle doing that kind of thing for years). Yes, there is gloominess a-plenty. But what this has, which I think 100th Window missed, is... capital letters... SOUL.

It's an album that is destined for coffee tables, new year's parties and easy headlines about the vocal collaborators (hello, Guy Garvey), and therefore many serious music fans will brush it off their shrugged shoulders. Which is a shame.

What will really get me all excited are those Burial remixes the internet's been promising.

Pantha Du Prince

Also out this month is Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise. Oh, and look, he has vocal collaborations from the likes of Animal Collective, !!! and LCD Soundsystem people. Read this and weep, The Guardian.

Black Noise is awash with clouds. You know how some albums sound urban-y and some sound outdoors-y? This is Heidi the goat-herder's friend flatlining on heroin on the highest mountain in the world while buzzards perform a jagged dance of death around her.

With sharp techno, dizzying loops, spiralling bells and smoky, smoky atmospherics, this will appeal to Susumu Yokota fans looking to grab something a bit more substantial by the goat horns.

All that Ritornell jazz trumped by a wonky Shitkatapult

This week's award for the jazziest electronica to come out of Austria goes to Ritornell, whose debut album Golden Solitude is out in a few days.

The duo comprise a jazz pianist called Richard and a sound experimentalist named Roman, the latter most famously having drummed with Patrick Wolf. It's a CV that doesn't pump my purist electronica heart.

The album is sparkle full of mellow washes, sparse drumming, and sound structures that refuse to be rushed. I'm less enamoured with the ladles of jazz saxophone that dominate the album toward the beginning, and more impressed with the found-sound metallic echoes of later tracks like Disappearing City.

Ritornell sounds like the kind of music Nightmares On Wax ought to be making, and I guess I'm too much Roman and not enough Richard to thoroughly enjoy the record.

Wonky techno label (and John Peel favourite) Shitkatapult have churned out their 100th release, and it's the best thing since sliced eyeballs.

Strike 100 is a triple-vinyl collection of the best of Shitkatapult, and it's all rather mellow. Which is astonishing, considering the craziness this label has released in the past. A number of artists have written stuff especially for the album, including T Raumschmiere (pictured: photo by Kika Da Silva) in a rumbling minor key mode, and The Orb on remarkable form with some serious big fat chords.

The stand-out for obvious reasons is Apparat's shimmering remix of Johnny Cash's I Heard The Lonesome Whistle Blow. Not the best track, but most def the coolest.

Listen to bits of the whole dang album on the Shitkatapult website - you'll notice one of the tracks is by Felix. I'm pretty sure it's not this Felix.