Ten amazing albums that influenced my taste in music

My blogging schedule's gone a bit sideways because the Covid-19 lockdown has, like many other people, left me quite out of sorts. My capacity for creativity is pretty limited.

So I'm going to steal something I did on Facebook. And then we'll get back to the best-of-1995 thing.

My brother Grum tagged me in a Facebook challenge to name ten albums that influenced by taste in music. Here's what I posted, edited to make it more interesting than wot I said on Facebook. 

1 – The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld

I remember playing this on my cassette walkmen in my tent on family holidays. So surreal to be in some random Welsh field and to get this amazing, otherworldly collages playing in my young ears.

2 – Transglobal Underground's Dream Of 100 Nations

This strange mix of UK techno and African tribalism and things from other planets. "Watch the skies! Keep looking!" I went to see TGU a couple of years ago and they were phenomenal.

3 – Drum Club's Everything Is Now

The album that truly made me fall in love with the bass drum for bass drum's sake, an appreciation that served me well in many a club. Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump....

4 – Orbital's brown album. 

Here's the one that changed everything for me. My Damascene moment. The album that hardwired techno and all its variants into my brain for life. And look at me now. I'm **twitch** FINE.

5 – The Irresistible Force's Flying High

Mixmaster Morris's hypnotic ambience lifted me into heady clouds of dubby ambience: I haven't quite come down since. The kind of album that lives in my veins. I also liked things with circles on. See also Banco de Gaia.

6 – The Goons' Ying Tong Song

No, really. This is cheating because it's an EP not an album, and it was a family hand-me-down rather than something I bought myself, but it's worth it because THIS IS WHAT MY BRAIN IS LIKE ALL OF THE TIME.

7 – Adamski's Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy

I have to say, this is NOT a good album, despite the presence of Killer and NRG. But Adamski's DIY 'keyboard wizard' approach introduced my little Smash Hits brain to the concept of the bedroom studio a long time before doing that was a viable option.

8 – Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman

An obvious one for other fans of 90s techno, but what a strange animal at the time. I was already a fan of their 12-inches and I keenly devoured Junior Boy's Own's early output. All that gorgeous Tomato design work too. Cor.

9 – LTJ Bukem's Logical Progressions series

Drum 'n' bass was always a trip, and even now the thought of this series gives me tingles. My few short years as a drum 'n' bass DJ were some of my happiest creative times. The best sound, the best live experience, and the best to mix. 

10 – Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Pretty obvious, this one. That bass in Ageispolis. Oooooo.

And so many more, of course. Ten will do for now. 

That's it. I'm creatively spent. I've run out of words. Flong. Pathoot. Clibbibuuuu. See? It's just noise.

I'm off for yet another night of stupidly vivid lockdown dreams.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: B is for Boss Drum (2010)

Further Fats: Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass (2016)

Best electronic albums of 2019: eighteen

18 – J Majik – Full Circle (Infrared)

J Majik made his name with Metalheadz, which contrary to popular belief is not a Cyberman sex club but is instead one of the leading jungle music labels co-founded by everyone's favourite classical music conductor Goldie.

And that pretty much sums up what's on offer. Full Circle offers superbly retro drum ‘n’ bass noises: there are tingly bits which sound like heaven and busy drums that sound like hell and sassy vocals that sound like somewhere inbetween.

As with LTJ Bukem back in ye olden days, this has all the energy of those smoke-filled d'n'b clubs. The chords swell, the amen breaks spiral, the bass shudders, and the result is gorgeous. The beautiful break-down and beat drop in Red Circle is worth the price of the stream alone.

You might not be into drum 'n' bass. This is an excellent starting point because, to slightly misquote Tricky, it's brand new, it's retro. And yes, I am also wondering how Cybermen have sex. Must be something to do with pipes.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass

In a Salford pub yesterday, as I leant against a snoozing cat (pictured), I was reminiscing about the moment I discovered the full beauty of drum 'n' bass.

It was at Tribal Gathering in a tent dense with dry ice. It was like walking into a shisha pipe, only with a sillhouette of an MC rising out of the cloud. I'd got a load of vinyl, but it was the first time I'd seen "liquid beats" (ugh) in a live setting.

Here's a remix of LTJ Bukem's classic track Music. It's just a clip (full version here), but this is the kind of loveliness I walked into.



For those not used to this kind of drum 'n' bass, you need to get over the busy-ness of the beat. It is, after all, running at 175BPM which is enough to leave your rattled bones scattered over the dancefloor. Let the loop become one. And then lose yourself in the chords swirling around the centre.

Despite the likes of Rudimental hooking up with Ed Sheeran to bring a clunkier - yet still entertaining - form of this music to the Hozier generation, the genre has stayed pleasantly underground. Yeah, there was that Olive track a generation ago, and that woman totally addicted to bass. But really...

But the smoky, airy Bukem stuff remains fairly pure. And, when done well, absolutely one of the most liberating styles of music alongside acid house.

A particular favourite of mine was Big Bud. a regular on Progression Sessions and someone whose sound seemed to cut a little deeper. Listen to High Times below.

I like cats. I like drum 'n' bass. Maybe there's a corrolation between the weed-hazed jungle ambience and a domesticated jungle cat that sleeps 22 hours a day.

Maybe this, and exactly this, is what cats hear in their head all the time.



Further Fats: Bleep Years day nineteen - LTJ Bukem's Horizons (2012) 

Further Fats: The precarious future of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud (2016)

Bleep Years day nineteen: LTJ Bukem's Horizons (1995)

As Bleep Years wobbles inexorably to its memory-gorged conclusion, we take one last gasp of the 1990s. After this, we fill in the final year on our grid above, then we mope around wondering what to do with ourselves.

1995: LTJ Bukem's Horizons

1995 was the year Robson & Jerome and Simply Red were at the height of their powers. Grunge had fizzled away, as had the anti-Thatcher musical angst. What was left? Two things. Drum. And bass.

LTJ Bukem was raised on jazz and classical music, and brought a melodic, breathy, atmospheric edge to drum 'n' bass missing from early jungle releases from the likes of General Levy. He seemed to build an empire with Good Looking Records, and it's thanks to him I got into Peshay, Photek and Blame.

I was a hack on a local newspaper in the mid-1990s, uncomfortable in my own skin and hungry for new experiences. Clubbing was my release, and I still remember the first moment I saw Bukem in action. It was in a big tent with lots of dry ice and herbal smells. Within a few years, I would have perfected the long d&b beatmatch: those intricate beats are, whisper it, deceptively simple.

Horizons is Bukem's signature tune, and it could be regarded as an anthem for the 1995 Me as I explored who I was, what I was into and how to get the next high. It's also a pants-flappingly great track.

Waxy tip-off: turn up the High Contrast

Time for a lesson: here's the history of drum 'n' bass in fast forward.

Get a crayon, put its waxy tip on early rave, then draw a squiggly line from early 1990s ambient through the breathy jungle of LTJ Bukem all the way to the harder percussion and stepping basslines of High Contrast. End of lesson.

High Contrast is still banging out the choons, although his new best-of compilation, Confidential, has somewhat underwhelmed the BBC.

HC's punchy snares land with a satisfying snap, like a wet towel in a changing room. In his own way, his chord progressions and song structure are -- and I need to whisper this -- as comfortably recognisable and as nicely predictable as Coldplay. He's not afraid of the commercial end of his chosen genre, but what separates him from Coldplay is, well, High Contrast isn't a twazmuppet who covers his hands in multicoloured electrical tape the name of world peace.

He could always draw on his hand with a crayon.

High Contrast's Confidential is a double disc. Once side of the coin is the sprightly d 'n' b we're used to, such as the skipping, airy Return Of Forever (eighties bassline ahoy). The second half is a whole pile of remixes with some big hitters like Missy Elliot and Eric "Teaching Madonna How To Make Fame-Inspired Promo Videos" Prydz.

On this second disc, I can forgive him the odd Adele remix because his Utah Saints reworking is a total monster of a track. Again, his downfall could be his commerciality... but it's so much fun.
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The record label that spawned this Welsh bass-stepper, Hospital Records, puts out a jolly good podcast - seek it out on an iTunes near you. In the meantime, bag yourself some Confidential information here.

You may put your crayon away now.