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....

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.

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

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

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

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