The Lovely Genette - 'Dreadnaught EP'

This reminds me very clearly of an afternoon at Moose's airy, sun-dappled flat. We went round to listen to the upcoming Soundclash releases - I vaguely remember that it felt a bit like a team-building day - and The Lovely Genette (John Bolton) was there, looking like a speed-fuelled postindustrial Tintin. It was mainly the steel toecapped boots, blond cowslick and rockabilly styling that gave this impression, with his baggy clothes hanging off a skinny drummer's body. Me, Rob Overseer John and Moose listened to a load of DATs, and when we played John's (it was the DAT master of this EP), Rob laughed and said 'Zak, meet your long-lost brother'.

Basically, we were both using a sampler trick to create a feel. You take a drum loop, but then move it up and down the keyboard, altering the tempo and feel of the drums. It gets irritating if overused, but at the time it sounded fresh and weird, again going back to Mixmaster Morris's assertion that no two records would ever sound the same once sampler technology became affordable and widespread.

Musically, this is a weird gospel-dub hybrid, starting out like the coolest record you've ever heard, but not moving on from that. You'd think that sounding like the coolest record you've ever heard would be a good thing - an enormous breathy organ bassline, stomp-clap drums and sampled 'trouble, trouble, trouble' blues-gospel vocal line - but it doesn't really progress over the four tracks of the EP.

Cat No: SOUND 010

Tracks: Well Boss. No More. DiscoHead. Kick Their Booty.

Cornershop - 'When I Was Born For the 7th Time'

I like this album, but it really groans to support the weight of the opening two tracks. 'Brimful of Asha' was a big chart hit, and although the original version seems a tad languid compared to the Fatboy Slim remix that took it to the top of the charts, it's still a great pop song.

However what totally ruins this album for me is the the first four bars of 'Sleep on the Left Side' were used as a backing track for the talkie introduction to their daytime Radio 1 show by DJs Marc Riley and Mark Radcliffe. So every time I play this, I'm instantly taken back to a halcyon period where Radio 1 had two hilarious (but largely inappropriate to the demographic) chaps at the helm of their lunchtime show. They were dry, sardonic, intelligent and totally at odds with the rest of the DJ roster. It was as though the controllers of the station thought that their listeners gained 20 IQ points for a couple of hours at lunchtime.

The PRS alone for that snippet of backing track must have made Cornershop a fortune.

Cat No: WIJLP 1065

Tracks: Sleep on the Left Side. Brimful of Asha. Butter the Soul. Chocolat. We're in Yr Corner. Funky Days are Back Again. What is Happening. When the Light Appears Boy. Coming Up. Good Shit. Good to be one the Road Back Home Again. It's Indian Tobacco My Friend. Candyman. State Troopers. Norwegian Wood.

Deadly Avenger - 'Charlie Don't Surf EP'

I love Deadly Avenger. I've never heard anything by him that didn't demonstrate his understanding of music, technology, and the prevailing zeitgeist. Put those three things together and you get a really cool bit of music. FACT!

Four tracks, two slow and sprawling, one very fast, and one mid-paced hip hop mash up. It's that last one I'll have bought it for, no doubt, and carried to every DJ gig I ever played, but probably never actually played.

It's a great sounding record, but other than it having a ticket on it telling me that I bought it from Music & Video Exchange for the princely sum of £6.50, I couldn't tell you anything more about its life with me. I also notice from the catalogue number etched into the run-off area that it's Illicit's first release. They must have been very proud.

Cat No: ILL-001

Tracks: not listed

DJ Shadow - 'Endtroducing'

This was such a massive record when it was released that it's hard to explain precise connection with it at all. It was such a big part of my life that it's like trying to describe what an old fork or a glass means to me. This is the record that every bedroom sampler geek wishes they'd made. It's simple but profound, a staement of humble genius.

The track titles hint that this album is compiled from masses of material, multiple versions of the same track, something that anyone who has made music at home will relate to - there's never a definitive mix of a track until it's mastered and in the shops. And even then there is the opportunity to release different mixes of tracks - I know I've got a version of 'Midnight in a Perfect World' somewhere with a vocal on it.

And yet this is a record that is so of its time that it it's almost empty now. It's a guy with a sampler trying to sound like a guy with a drum kit. It was such a cool record when it was released that it almost seems meaningless now. I think you had to be there at the time, or know the story of times, to really get this record.

Weird - I thought I'd go ga-ga hearing this again, but it's left me a bit cold.

Cat No: MW059

Tracks: Best Foot Forward. Building Seam With A Grain of Salt. The Number Song. Changeling. Transmission 1. Stem/Long Stem. Transmission 2. Mutual Slump. Organ Donor. Why Hip Hop Sucks in '96. Midnight in a Perfect World. Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain. What Does You Soul Look Like (Part 1 - Blue Sky Revisit). Transmission 3.

Cornershop - '6am Jullander Shere'

Man, this is a huge record. Not production wise, because it's pretty ordinary - low-fi even, on the album mix. But for me, culturally, this is a very significant record. For me, it's about visiting mates in Leeds, about early samplers, about techno-ethno fusion, Megadog, excitement and possibility.

The album mix is a beautifully simple chant (I remember being told it was based on a morning prayer chant) in one of the languages of the Indian continent (I'll guess Punjabi) over drones of string instruments and clunky percussion. I remember listening to it at Brudenell Road (where I would end up living 5 or so years later) and wanting to play it again and again. It's just such a joyful and exuberant piece of music, almost childish in its simplicity, and so almost timeless and placeless.

So many memories: Choque of Black Star Liner covering his car in leopard print (on the outside): buying warm samosas at Maumoniats: the gritty post-industrial feeling of Leeds, finding its feet and making sense of its place in the world at the end of the 20th century. Happy, mad,exciting times when anything felt possible.

I loved this track so much. I dropped the whole of it into a home studio-produced DJ mix, over a beat looped from the Prodigy's 'Poison', and it led out into Cypress Hill's 'Ain't Goin' Out Like That'. Most people I played the mix to had never heard '6am Jallander Shere' before, which to me was baffling, but I guess just underlines what this whole blog is about - personal connection to music.

Catalogue Number: WIJ48L

Tracklist: Jeh Jeh Vocal Mix. All Fetters Loose Mix. Album Mix.

Pressure Drop - 'Tearing the Silence'

This is all about one track for me - 'Up Against the Wall'. It's a bad-ass piece of electronic instrumental hip hop, with a couple of vocal lines sampled over it. It's atmospheric, funky and moody, and contains the shouted line 'up against the wall, motherfucker'. It's a line that still makes me smile, for two reasons.

Wall of Sound were a really cool label at the of the 1990s, and they did a DJ session on Radio 1 as the Wall of Sound Allstars. They played this track, and knowing that they'd been naughty using profanity on late-night radio, turned it into a cheery singalong of 'up against the wall, up against the wall, up against the waaall motherfaahckerrrr'. Maybe they were trying to demonstrate that if you keep repeating profanity, it loses its sting. Or maybe they were just drunk. Either way, it was pretty funny.

The other reason it sticks in my mind is that when we were working on the Overseer album 'Wreckage', Rob wanted to use that vocal sample, but clearance being what it was, Rob elected to 'recreate' it, getting Ricky Wilson (now of Kaiser Chiefs but then in local hopefuls Parva) to record 'us against the world, motherfucker'. I'd totally forgotten that until I listened to 'Wreckage' the other day.

The other memory it brings back is DJing with Moose (Paul Curtis) at the Elbow Room in Leeds. He was (and probably still is) a really good DJ, and I was grateful that he shared his deckspace with me. Now he's doing Symbollix - proof that the cream always rises.

Catalogue Number: HAND024T

Tracks: The Calling. Masher. Part 13. Tearing the Silence. Up Against the Wall. Torn Beats. Call to Mind

The Verve - 'Urban Hymns'

I don't get Richard Ashcroft. I know that to many people he's like some modern rock shaman, chanellling the spirit of Jim Morrisson, wild, tortured and half-mad, but I don't see it. I see a lot of swagger and some good songs staggering under the weight of the enormous chip on his shoulder. This may or may not be influenced by the fact that even my good lady appears to have a soft spot for him. Watch it Ashcroft, she's mine.

I think I've only played this a handful of times, but for me the stand-out track by miles is 'Catching the Butterfly', which is the sort of naggingly beautiful but slightly weird production that people used to put on the b-side of a seven inch single. I've no idea why I bought it - it's not my thing at all. It reminds me of being in my room on Brudenell Road, Leeds, playing this record and thinking 'why have I bought this piece of crap?', which is all a bit literal, but perhaps indicative of how little emotional connection I've managed to make with this record.

Catalogue Number: HUTLP45

Tracks: Bitter Sweet Symphony. Sonnet. The Rolling People. The Drugs Don't Work. Catching the Butterfly. Neon Wilderness. Space and Time. Weeping Willow. Lucky Man. One Day. This Time. Velvet Morning. Come On.

Various Artists - 'Soul of Jamaica'

I could listen to reggae til it comes out of my ears. Hang on, that's a weird thing to say about something that goes into your ears. I could listen to reggae all day. That's a much better, if slightly more prosaic, declaration of enjoyment. I love the warmth of the production, and the humanity of the music. But there's something odd going on here.

Every track on this compilation album seems to be suffused with sadness. I don't know why that is - maybe there's a lot of minor key arrangements here, or maybe this is one of those records that I played on repeat at a low point in my life. Even the uptempo arrangement of 'Dream Lover' seems to be played briskly so as to get it over as quickly as possible. It reminds me of the saying 'the blues ain't nothing but a good man feeling bad', except this is reggae, and it's spookily mournful.

Despite loving it, I may never play this record again.

Catalogue Number: HELP15

Tracks: This is Reggae Music. Funky Kingston. Starvation. Concrete Jungle. UFO. The World is Upside Down. Hey Mr Yesterday. Chapel of Love. Guava Jelly. Dream Lover.

DJ Krush - 'Meiso'

God this is a great record. I bought this around the same time as I bought DJ Shadow's 'Endtroducing', and at the time, it seemed as though we - them and us, the producer and the consumer - were reinventing hip hop.

This is a sort of music that is totally stripped back to basics - a simple rhythm, some weird ambience standing in for a topline melody, and a vocal, a willing sacrifice of technical musicianship, an atavistic return to basics. The irony is that it takes a lot technology to make something sound so simple. Of course, you could argue that everything Mo Wax did was just James Lavelle selling a beautifully packaged lifestyle ideal, and you'd be right. But it was such a cool lifestyle that it was hard to resist.

This reminds me of Luke, who married my friend Bekki. He was a real Mo Wax junkie, and sort of still is - he's certainly still got lots of their first editions and box sets. I'll have to have a poke through his shelf next time I'm at their place, as we attempt to arrange a marriage between our children. I guess that makes us grown-ups, right?

Tracks: Only the Strong Survive. Anticipation. What's Behind Darkness. Meiso. Bypath 1. Blank. Ground. Bypath 2. Most Wanted Man. Bypath 3. 3rd Eye. OCE 9504. Duality. Bypath - Would You Take It?

Catalogue Number: MW039LP

Various Artists - 'The Singing Detective'

I have no idea when, where or why I bought this. I'm not sure I've ever played it, sampled it or danced to it. Although it's a perfectly nice collection of jazz standards, compiled from original period recordings, it doesn't move me.

I watched a couple of episodes of 'The Singing Detective' a few years back. Despite remembering it as being groundbreaking and a bit creepy, I wasn't crazy about that either.

Sorry, not a fan.

Catalogue Number: BEN 608

Tracks: Peg o' my Heart. Limehouse Blues. Blues in the Night. Dry Bones. Rockin' in Rhythm. Cruising Down the River. Don't Fence Me In. It Might As Well be Spring. Lili Marlene. I Get Along Without You Very Well. Do I Worry? Accentuate The Positive. You Always Hurt The One You Love. After You've Gone. It's A Lovely Day Tomorrow. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall. The Very Thought of You. The Teddy Bears Picnic. We'll Meet Again.

Various - 'The Deer Hunter'

I'm pretty sure that this is one of a few records I bought in a thrift store in Brooklyn, when I lived there in the early 1990s. I was sharing an apartment in a brownstone on South Portland Avenue, and had walked to the Silver Spoon on Flatbush for breakfast and a spot of bargain hunting. The walk over took in a fair number of run-down and vacant lots,a sort of urban wasteland. It was OK in the daytime, but you wouldn't want to be there at night. The discarded crack vials made that quite clear.

It's a nice-enough record, although a bit of a mish-mash - it doesn't really make sense without knowing the film. Strings, acapella folk, acoustic guitars, then a bit of polka, then some helicopters and machine guns. It's evocative, but it's hard to say of what - a forgotten America, maybe?

The helicopters sounded great sampled and played back as part of a track when we played a Speakerfreaks gig at The Warehouse in Leeds, late 90s, probably at 'It's Obvious'. I drew the line at machine guns - the KLF had a monopoly on that.

Did I really bring a load of second-hand vinyl home on a plane from New York? Madness.

Catalogue Number: SOO-11940

Tracklist: Cavatina. Praise in the Name of the Lord. Troika. Katyusha. Struggling Ahead. Sarabande. Waiting His Turn. Memory Eternal. God Bless America. Cavatina (Reprise)

Deadly Avenger - 'King Tito's Gloves EP'

Sprawling, groovy breakbeat of various tempos. Nicely produced, and although I was going to dismiss this as the sort of thing everyone with a sampler and a keyboard was doing in 1999, it's a notch above the usual cut-and-paste dross.

'Live at the Capri' starts with the theme from Superman, and then a couple of really great vocal rap loops over a fat-ass beat. I've used it to kick start a DJ set before now, but you've only got about 45 seconds of good stuff before it all gets a bit cheesy nu-disco funk. By the time the meandering piano breakdown kicks in halfway through, people will be leaving the dancefloor, so use the first 45 seconds to good effect, then get the hell out. Rob Overseer did something similar with this very record for a Mary Anne Hobbes DJ set that was studio-recorded in Leeds. I remember it took hours to get the set right - I went to the pub, watched a football match, had a couple of pints, came back, and he and engineer Dave were still arseing about, adding snippets to it. The DJ set sounded great on Radio 1 (this was probably in 2000), but I'm not sure it was worth all the hours of recording toilets flushing (in stereo!), multitracking and overdubs.

I'd be amazed if Damon Baxter (for it is he) isn't now writing movie soundtracks. Anyone know?

Tracks: King Tito's Gloves. In Pursuit of the Pimpmobile vII. Live at the Capri (Supermix). Lopez Part 2.

Catalogue Number: ILL-002

Brian Eno - 'Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks'

Like the Eno ambient album a few days ago, again I've no idea when I got this. It might have been a charity shop find - the cover's a bit torn, as you can see.

I've probably only played this a few times. Looking at the credits, it turns out this is an accompanying soundtrack to a collage of films from the moon missions. I'm at a loss as to quite how the slide guitar on a few of tracks evokes the majesty of space travel.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this album is that Daniel Lanois is credited as playing and arranging elements of it. The year after this was released, Eno and Lanois produced U2's 'The Unforgettable Fire', and you can certainly pick up elements of that production here, notably the layers of keyboard washes. This isn't really music, it's sound to fill a space and create a mood, which is the sort of ambient music I really love. But put it on as a background for pudding at a dinner party, as I once did, and everyone rolls their eyes and says 'Uh-oh, it's all gone a bit Gong'. Philistines.

Catalogue Number: EGLP53

Tracks: Under Stars. The Secret Place. Matta. Signals. An End (Ascent). Under Stars II. Drift. Silver Morning. Deep Blue Day. Weightless. Always Returning. Stars.

Mellowtrons - 'Rhythmwide / Resolution 9'

This is a double A side piece of vinyl by Lee, an old mate from Salisbury. Lee is a bit of a dark horse - when you meet him, he seems slightly scatty and hyper, but underneath that slightly mad disorganised outer shell is a slightly mad but much more organised inner being. I know he's more organised then his outer persona suggests, because he's toured as a techie with Orbital, and I don't imagine you get to do that unless you really know your stuff.

I have lots of vivid memories of time spent with Lee: we turned up at the house of Jack Dangers (of Meat Beat Manifesto) and he played us the final mix of their latest album 'Satyricon' live off his home studio desk: he introduced me to Phil Hartnoll (of Orbital) just before their Manchester Academy gig in 1995 - Phil just said 'awright mate' as I stood there overawed at meeting this colossus of techno. He seemed a bit smaller than I expected, although to be fair to him, he'd have had to have been an eight foot tall robosonic cyborg to have actually lived up to my expectations.

My favourite memory of hanging out with Lee was a night out in London - I forget when, but it may have been the night before I attended the cut of the first Speakerfreaks EP. We were heading to a club with a bunch of his vegan mates, and I realised that I hadn't eaten enough for a night out. I stopped and grabbed a hot dog from a street seller, which sent a couple of his vegan mates a bit nuts. I remember one of them getting right in my face, going 'that's right shove it in', and generally making me feel bad about eating a tube of mechanically recovered meat, with onions and ketchup.

Musically, this is all over the shop. Lee was great at building soundscapes from obscure samples, slapping a funky beat over it (that's funky as in 'on the one') for 90 seconds, then breaking it down into slightly too much sprawling ambience, before hoofing a beat back in again. But give him his due - Chill Out were THE label to be on in 1995.

Tracks: Rhythmwide. Resolution 9.

Catalogue Number: CHILL12010

Leaf Records - 'Pole vs. Four Tet EP'

This is quite a new acquisition - my work colleague Dan gave it to me for my birthday a few years ago, so I guess it reminds me mainly of him. I met him in about 2003, when he was working at Polar Bear in Headingley, Leeds. He was a regular customer at Beer-Ritz. At the time, I thought I knew a lot about music, but Dan kept bringing in CDs from bands I'd never heard of, and everything he lent me was brilliant. It would be exaggerating slightly to say that I gave him a job to get access to his music collection, but only slightly.

Musically, I love this record - it's a great example of how electronic music can sound organic and human, which is odd given its clearly processed and bass-heavy production. Four Tet (Kieran Hebden) is a dab hand at making sequenced music sound natural and live, and if you've never heard any of his early albums, I'd strongly recommend checking them out. And if you like dub, the extreme minimalism of Pole's first three albums (handily titled 1, 2 and 3) are also a must.

Tracks: Heim (Four Tet Mix). Cload. Cload (Pole Mix). Heim.

Catalogue Number: DOCK20

Purusha and The Lovely Genette - 'Gasoline/Cambigil'

A weird, minimal spooked-out record this one, on a legendary but now defunct small Leeds-based, full of personal half-memories not really related to the music. I suppose this a classic example of 'sampler dub', which was quite popular at the time when everyone had sampler. For a while, Mimaster Morris's prediction that no two records need ever sound the same looked as though it might come true, although as we now know, sampling went the other way.

Soundclash was an almost well-known label at the time for releasing bass-heavy post-indutrial dub, and used to put on club nights using Iration Steppas' dub sound system, and I'm sure this record would have sounded awesome through it.

The Lovely Genette was a bloke called John, who played drums. Purusha was definitely a studio engineer, either double bass-playing Louis who mastered my first EP (at Leeds' Lion Studios), or a guy whose name I forget, who ran a studio in the top of Leeds Town & Country Club (which is now the Carling Academy). I remeber the T&C guy when I sat in on the mixing of a track for Overseer's first EP. He became slightly obsessed by identifying the drum sounds and samples Rob Overseer had used in the track, which culminated in a five minute discussion over whether a certain electronic sound from either the Roland 808 or 909 was called a 'thip' - onamatapeiacally correct, but very boring. I remember thinking that if the engineer couldn't correctly identify and name a thip, the whole session was doomed.

Tracks: Gasoline. Gasoline (Oil Drum). Cambigil. Cambigil (Sun Dub)

Catalogue Number: SOUND 005

Rodgers & Hammerstein - 'South Pacific'

This is one that I inherited from my parents. When they were working at a hospital together in the mid- to late 1960s, there was a staff production of South Pacific, which I guess at the time was still a more-or-less contemporary blockbuster. It's pretty high on the old fashioned cheese, but it's still a great listen. The high point for me is the raucous singalong 'There Is Nothing Like a Dame', partly because I heartily, unreconstructedly believe in the sentiment, but also because I've never met anyone who didn't have a smile put on their face by it.

Two examples: I was driving back from a skiing trip with my friends Ben, Simon and Malcolm. It was long boring drive, given an added twist by Malcolm's gallstones; they meant that we were travelling with a whole roundel of Pecorino cheese, which Malc insisted was a perfectly sensible provision (in case you hadn't guessed, Malc is a chap of a certain age). As we hurtled along, in post-holiday sadness, eating slices of Pecorino on chicory leaves (we're not as metrosexual as that makes us sound), I treated everyone to a run-through of '...Dame', jazz-hands and everything. Well, it cheered me up, anyway.

Example two: I was in the studio as a vocalist during the making of the Overseer album 'Wreckage'. I forget exactly why I'd brought this in - it's just possible that we were trying to find something totally off the wall for a mixtape - and the general response to '...Dame' was 'This is DOPE!'.

The whole album is totally feelgood, with just enough raucousness to balance the slushy string-laden numbers. A stone-cold classic.

Tracklist: South Pacific Overture. Dites-moi. A Cockeyed Optimist. Twin Soliliquies. Some Enchanted Evening. Bloody Mary. My Girl Back Home. There is Nothing Like a Dame. Bali Hai. I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair. A Wonderful Guy. Younger Than Springtime. Happy Talk. Honey Bun. Carefully Taught. This Nearly Was Mine. Finale.

Catalogue number: RCA RB-16065

Brian Eno and Harold Budd - 'Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror'

I have no idea when I bought this. I'd guess it was late 1990s, because there are bits in it that I remember sampling and hiding in the background of tracks, just to fill it out and give it a bit of ambience (pun intended). The piano motif at the start of 'The Chill Air' immediately takes me back to the mini-studio I had set up at my gaff on Meanwood Road in Leeds. I vividly remember having woken up really early, getting into the studio, and laying down layers of samples as the background to a track. I'd used loads of tiny snippets of sound, collaged together behind a drumbeat. I had a terrible lack-of-sleep headache, and what came out of the sampler was reflective of that - disjointed, irritated and disembodied. Not a productive morning.

Conversely, 'Ambient 2' is a beautiful record, really soft and dreamy, but at the same time quite structured. I'd guess that's the combination of Eno's production and Budd's meandering but strong piano lines. It's from a period when ambient actually meant 'evocative', rather than shorthand for slow, repetitive faux-ethnic techno.

I hadn't noticed before, but this really reminds me of 'Genny Hanniver' by Tatsuhiko Asano, which is a relatively recent record. It has the same textures and dreamy feel, calm and cool, but at the same time pulling the listener towards a destination. I don't have 'Genny Hanniver' on vinyl, but it's certainly one of the better electronic downbeat records I've heard in the last 10 years.

Tracks: First Light, Steal Away, The Plateaux of Mirror, Above Chiangmai, An Arc of Doves, Not Yet Remembered, The Chill Air, Among Fields of Crystal, Wind in Lonely Fences, Failing Light.

Catalogue Number: Editions EG EGED18

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - 'Ella and Louis'

I don't really know anything about this record - for me, it's a really cool recording of two people at the top of their game, effortlessly swinging through a few standards. But maybe connoisseurs know this to be a cheesy commercial cash-in - whatever, I love it. There's a sleepy, languid quality to a lot of this. Even when they step it up on 'They Can't Take That Away From Me', you get the impression that they're both still sitting down.

I think I bought this from the now defunct chain 'Our Price' while living in Salisbury in the late 1980s. When I got it home, I was blown away by the warmth and intimacy of the recording. I'd just started getting into to hip hop, and this was the opposite of processed, sequenced music, a record in the truest sense - a recording of a performance. They probably knocked this out in an afternoon. To me, brilliant, warm, and deeply soulful.

It reminds me of sunny autumnal Sunday mornings in a bedsit in Salisbury, a rare moment of quiet between work and play. Which, thinking about it, meant being hungover and freezing.

Tracks: Can't We Be Friends, Isn't This A Lovely Day, Moonlight in Vermont, They Can't Take That Away From Me, Under a Blanket of Blue, Tenderly, A Foggy Day, Stars Fell on Alabama, Cheek to Cheek, The Nearness of You, April in Paris.

Catalogue Number: Verve 825 373-1