Spiky Records - 'Pi EP'

There was once a time when I was quite the dude. I managed, in February 1998 (I think it was) to snag a single of the week in the Vibes section of the NME. Notorious hyperbolist Steven Wells said something like 'this record will make you piss blood and blaspheme in Spainish. Like me, it is strong and clean and perfect'. I'm certainly not going to refuse that praise (if praise it be), but I am aware that Swells may not have been in his right mind when he wrote that.

On the back of that, my bandmate/partner in crime Aidan and I went down to London to be interviewed by Ben Wilmott, a journo on the paper. Spiky Records was his label, not that there was anything even vaguely nepotistic or narcissistic about a music journalist having a record label. Actually, I thought Ben was a very sound guy - he liked my band Speakerfreaks - no, not the ones who released 'POS 51', we were the ORIGINAL Speakerfreaks.

Anyway, the Pi EP sits somewhere between early era Art of Noise, and late period Kraftwerk. It's OK, but it doesn't particularly grab me now, which makes me think it diddn't particularly grab me then.

Flipping it over, I note that Osymyso's name is on the label. He was quite cool for a bit, wasn't he?

Schizoid Man - 'Karate Juice EP'

What's amazing, looking back, is that this record was distinctive and different enough for me to pick it up in a record shop (Jumbo in Leeds, the price tag says), listen to it, and think 'cor, another slab of funky, beat-driven sampler music, I'll have some of that'.

It's a decent enough tune, the sort of thing you play early in the night just before you want to get people omto the dancefloor. It signifies a move from taxi-ing trip-hop to ass-shaking hip-hop. I remember doing just that one night at Leeds' Elbow Room, playing head-to-head with Moose (aka Paul Curtis, founder of a lot of things, but www.symbollix.com is his latest thing).

To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, worth hearing, but not worth going to hear

Phrack R - 'Catch 22 EP'

God bless John Peel. Right up until the point he died, he was still playing utterly bonkers music, and being totally, passionately, sincerely committed to it.

I bought this after hearing it on his show. In fact, this is the first record that the label Fused and Bruised released, and I've got it packed away in a sleeve with the second one that FaB did, the 'Bus, Dinner, Jam' EP by Futurecore. The more alert amongst you will have noticed that 'Bus, Dinner, Jam' sounds the same as 'Bustin' a jam', something I only realised when I went and asked for it by name in a record shop in Leeds. I forget what it was called, but I'm sure it was behind what is now House of Fraser. Was that Crash Records - surely not?

Of this EP, it's the track 'The Beatfreak' that I loved, a really minimal, over-compressed slab of electronic instrumental hip-hop. I used it for ages as a track to build rhymes around. I think I played it out a few times too, mostly when I did anything as an artist on the now defunct Soundclash label - 'The Beatfreak' is just such a dirty, swaggering slab of sonic 'shut-the-fuck-up-and-listen-to-me' that I think I used it as an opener to a DJ set a few times, and I'm pretty sure that one time I even rapped over it, plugging my headphones into the mic socket of the mixer and really cutting loose for a couple of minutes. I remember nobody took a blind bit of notice, but for those 2 minutes, DJing and rapping through headphones, I felt like a the bastard offspring of Grandmaster Flash and KRS-1. Happy days.