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.