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.

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