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.

The Stone Roses and the seriously stained alley of nostalgia

Edit: I was clearly way off the mark in this piece. Here are my 2016 reflections on the new Stone Roses single.

The Stone Roses are reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses might be reforming.

Manchester was awash with speculation yesterday. It's the only thing people were talking about in the porn shops. Drug dealers whispered the news from beneath street grids. All the flyers in Affleck's Palace were replaced with pictures of Ian Brown next to a big question mark.

In fact, Manchester does nostalgia almost as well as Liverpool, what with reformations by the likes of James, M People and, um, Northside. When in fact what we really want back are our dearly deceased, such as Joy Division, Frank Sidebottom and Together.

Although the cod-blues drudgery on the second Stone Roses album was a crock of anal splatter, the band's contribution to rock music stands as proudly as the Beetham Tower and we Mancunians should shout about it. Well. Drawl about it.

What we didn't need, though, was another trip down a syringe-ridden nostalgia alley. We'd just end up vomiting into our navals and using our hoody to wipe up the sick, thereby creating an ironically-pleasing hypercolour design on our clothing. How on earth can they recapture the Bez days of our lives? Stand in Harvey Nicks and pretend it's the Hacienda? No, thanks.

The rumours were quashed pretty quickly. Many commentators took a (private) post-funeral piss-up between ex-band members as genuine news. But Mani himself gave a journalist a right old ear-pummelling about the rumours, ending his rant with "It isn't true and isn't happening."

The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. Let the whispers become murmers then shouts: the Stone Roses will not come again.

See also: How do you solve a problem like Madchester?

We need a new Mercury Music Prize for people that give a crap about electronic music

There's a sumptuous scene in Danny Boyle's best movie Sunshine where a fullstop-like planet Mercury slinks past a firey, all-powerful sun.

For electronica fans, it represents a brilliant metaphor for the Mercury Music Prize: an insignificant dot backed up by a glowing past that is more distant than you think.

When the Mercury showered Primal Scream with £20,000 for such a far-out album as Screamadelica, beating U2, Simply Red and Young Disciples, it was a kick in the Brit Awards' union jack pants. That was in 1992, remember, when 20 grand was worth about a billion quid..

The kudos reverbarated through the years with Portishead and Roni Size reaching equally dizzy heights. And that's despite the Mercury trying to derail everything by choosing M People in 1994.

I'm not saying this year's list sucks. I've filed Bat For Lashes, Glasvegas or (yawn) Friendly Fires into a big box labelled "shrug", but I'm sure they deserve their success. You may well argue this in the comments section.

But where's the electronica? We've been thrown a brace of bones with Underworld (although never with the ultimate techno album band Orbital), but there's something fundamentally wrong.

In a great piece for Bleep43, Toby Frith searches for any Mercury nods for Warp Records ("the UK’s most important label") and fails. You could make a similar argument for Leaf.

Firth argues it's because electronica immerses itself in singles and live appearances, rather than albums. He's right (think of Windowlicker), but the exclusion from this year's nominations of Squarepusher's Just A Souvenir is criminal.

It's more because of the man rather than the album. The Square one (photo, above, from Bangface) became the darling of the serious press last autumn; if any electronica artist was going to be the Mercury's first true IDM nomination, it was going to be him.

Except it wasn't. Inside that little dot of a prize, there so many are guitars, guitars, guitars, there's little room for a 303. And, as non-nominated Fatboy Slim will tell you, everybody needs a 303.

Maybe we live on a different planet, in a different solar system with Aphex Twin's grinning face where the sun should be. And maybe, therefore, we need our own Music Prize that respects a wickedly neglected genre.

A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article

Maimed

In the 1970s, thousands of children were killed or maimed on Britain's roads. A cutesy animated kid and his cat warned us to take more care. The Prodigy turned this innocent bairn into a drug-hoovering club gibbon with debut hit Charly. Rave was born, and Kenny Everett, who voiced the cat, died of shock.

Trumped

While Sesame Street and Trumpton birthed kids 'n' drugs anthems photocopied from the Charly original, the Prodigy retreated into the studio to record an album. Experience was a crap name, and the music, although iconic, became a joke in grunge-obsessed Britain. Still, they proved techno bands could turn out a decent album.

Burnt

Experience was beaten to the Mercury Music Prize by Manchester band M People: the repercussions of this were felt 15 years later when the B Of The Bang sculpture fell apart. Alex Garland, who designed the Experience's cover, went on to write the screenplay for 28 Days Later in which Manchester was burnt to the ground. M People have won nothing since.

Goaded

On mid-90s follow-up Music for the Jilted Generation, the Prodge sidled up to sweaty crusties Pop Will Eat Itself to stamp their feet against the Criminal Justice Bill. So many voodoo people bought this album, they became the same establishment they so hated. They goaded people with "the poison" and "the remedy" simultaneously, which seems like a pretty toothless threat to me.

Sandwiched

After D:Ream won the election for "New" Labour, the Prodigy did wonders for the sale of Stella with abuse anthem Smack My Bitch Up. The video for this single used lesbianism in a way that only Katy Perry could wish for.  Parent album The Fat Of The Land turned band member Keith into a spiky-haired firestarting freak. It was quite the in-thing to be "psychosomatic addict insane". Fat Of The Land was the sixth most successful LP of 1997 in the UK, sandwiched between Celine Dion and the Spice Girls. There are so many potential jokes here, but I'm ignoring every one of 'em.

Things
Between 1997 and 2008, the Prodge did quite a lot of things that precisely nobody cares about.

Ends.

So there it is. All you need to know about the Prodigy. They have come a long way since what is offically known as their 'Kenny Everett phase'. The dear old Prodders have returned with an album of nuanced ballads called Invaders Must Die. Like a flesh-eating disease, it has grown on me, and I fear I was a little harsh in my review last week.

If this scant biography was too long for you to read, settle for this even briefer biog posted by a friend on my Facebook page:

"Band formed, did stuff, went away, did more stuff a bit later. Shouted a lot."