Beck - 'Odelay'

The first thing you notice about this record is that it's super-heavyweight vinyl - audiophile 180gm, or something. It gives the impression of quality and, dare I say, phatness before the needle ever touches the groove.

Beck Hanson is essentially a surrealist artist. His musical career was something of an accident, catapulted as he was into the mainstream by the single 'Loser'. The rest of that album, 'Mellow Gold' - we'll be getting to that at some point - is a whimsical, downbeat set of doodles that wouldn't have seen the light of day without the chart-crushing juggernaut of 'Loser'.

'Odelay' is the sound of a white boy finding his dancing feet, releasing the funk, and cutting a fiery swathe across an indie dancefloor. The classic surrealist trademarks are all here - unusual juxtapositions, dreams made real, a strange hallucinatory quality pervading everything - and yet this is surrealist art you can dance to. It has a musically timeless quality to it that means it could be anywhere from Sgt. Pepper to the present day.

What does it remind me of? It reminds me of seeing Beck live at Leeds Festival in (I think) 2000. He wasn't quite at the peak of his powers, but there was a feeling that, as he boogied manically in front of 20,000 people, he couldn't put a foot wrong. He evoked the spirit of David Byrne in 'Stop Making Sense', which is a must-see gig-movie. He epitomised coolness, was slightly deranged, and was backed by DJ Swamp, who performed the most deck-defying feats of vinyl manipulation I'd ever seen. A year later, I found the 'DJ Swamp Skip-Proof Scratch Tool', and I was sold on the way of the wicky-wicky.

I'm not sure that Beck ever got any better than this, but crucially, he never got much worse either.

Overseer - 'Zeptastic EP'

Hillariously, this record threw me a total curve ball. When I saw it, I thought it was going to remind me of late-90s Leeds, when everyone and their mate had a sampler and was making music. Seeing the record immediately took me back to Rob's bedroom studio in the top of a house on Brudenell Road in Leeds' Hyde Park.

I dropped the needle on to the first track, ready for the reverie continue, but was jolted forwards five years by the opening on 'Zeptastic'. I'd completely forgotten that this track had been reworked and re-recorded in the sessions for the album 'Wreckage'. It never made the final album, which was a shame as I think it was the best vocal I did for the entire record. I think it got buried under the weight of its own potential - at one point, the vocalists on it were me, Des Fafara (then of Coal Chamber) and (I swear I'm not making this up) Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue. Nikki Sixx slapped a great chorus onto it, but wanted to call the track 'Shake Your Pussy', which was clearly a non-starter for all sorts of reasons. Once you've got Nikki Sixx calling a track 'Shake Your Pussy', it's not going to make the cut.

I haven't even got a copy of that track any more - all my DATs and white CDs were pinched in a burglary in about 2005. Which is a shame, as my clearly biased opinion is that it's the great lost Overseer track, languishing in vaults, ready to swoop forth like rain washing scum off the streets.

The EP is good, the track 'Zeptastic' is great. Who knows what might have been....

Dope Skillz - '6 Million Ways'

Mid-paced drum and bass track that sounds a bit like 'Super Sharp Shooter' by the Ganja Kru, but lacks a bit in the inventiveness stakes.

Reminds me of DJing at Dust. You stick this in the middle of a D&B set, and then just as people lose interest, slam into something really rowdy. Top DJ tip there, for nowt.

Not very exciting really. The smell of nightclubs, smoke and drunk teenagers.

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.

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