Various Artists - 'Def Beats 1'

It's funny the crap you find in your record collection.

This reminds me of a couple things. The first is working in the printroom at Georgina von Etzdorf, with a guy called Ellis. He was bang into his hip hop, and sort of got me into it. I remember him telling me how to 'transformer scratch' (look it up), and I went home to learn how to do it. Of course, I didn't have Technics and a mixer, I had a crappy belt drive turntable and a tape dub button, but you can get a pretty good approximation of the effect with a Jesus & Mary Chain record and plenty of enthusiasm.

It also reminds me of an early trip to New York, staying at my friend Dave's place on Hoyt Street, Brooklyn. Being a music obsessive, I used to travel with tapes all the time, even though I'm not sure that I ever had a walkman to play them on. I guess I would show up and ask to put a tape on, which seems quite rude in retrospect.

Anyway, I remember Dave and his then girlfriend Leslie looking through my tapes. Leslie found the one that said 'Def Beats Vol 1' on it and said 'yayyy Def Beats'. Dave looked at her shocked and said 'you know this?'. Of course she didn't - she was just being nice.

This record is tripe - a sort of futuristic Ronco compilation deigned to exploit the current trend. It's one redeeming feature is that it features the late Derek B. Even he's crap on here, but we all know how great he became, right kids?

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....

Gravediggaz - 'Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide'

Contrary to the previous record, this has a wonderfully epic swagger to it. It's the sound of a hip hop supergroup trading rhymes, smashing it and generally having a great time.

What really surprises me is how little connection I have to this. I remember it coming out, and being really excited about it, but I just doesn't stir anything in me. It's a good hip hop track, but it doesn't transport me to a time or a place. Maybe I made the mistake of believing the hype, or maybe music doesn't need to be an eternal. I guess pop music can be both great and disposable at the same time - why not hip hop?

Gravediggaz - 'Diary of a Madman'

I played this ten days ago, and it reminded me of using a sampler. How crap is that for a memory? I played it a few more times, and still nothing.

Boooring. It's not a bad record, but it means zip to me. And I spent 10 days thinking about it. NEXT!

Blur - 'Blur'

Having listened to this album, I'd thought of something clever to write about it, but then realised that Blur had beaten me to it by calling this album 'Blur'. This is the sound of Blur being Blur without any thematic conceit driving their creativity.

In the battle of Britpop, it was often said that Oasis were The Beatles, mainly because they ripped off so many of their songs. The truth is, The Beatles never really had 'a sound' in the way that The Rolling Stones did. What marks The Beatles out is their restless creativity, which surely peaked with 'Yellow Submarine'.

I'm kidding of course . To quote the late, great Bill Hick's, 'they were so high they even let Ringo sing'. It's hard to know if with their later albums, The Beatles reached a creative plateau, and never fulfilled their potential of becoming the band they could have been. Although according to Alan Partridge, that was the band 'Wings'.

It's impossible for this record not to be swept away by 'Song 2', a mosh-pit anthem for the blipvert generation. So when this comes on, I'm reminded of dancing to it in sweaty clubs in Leeds. And I don't mean just as a punter, but also as a DJ. And I don't really mean dancing, I mean jumping up and down, with my fists clenched and my arms outstretched, feeling every little bit stress leave my body as I make myself one with the heaving mass of dancers, all screaming in unison, WOO HOO!

Catharsis. It feels good.

Eat - 'Sell Me A God'

I love this record so much. It's not just that it's a great record - and it is - but this is one of those records that I looked for for years before I found it. It seems impossible now, in the age of the internet and immediate downloads, but once upon a time, you actually had to hunt out music. You had to go to big cities to find better record shops, or visit record fairs on the offchance of them having what you wanted. Crazy times.

Musically, this is a proto-Britpop record, marking a time between the guitar-scrubbing of Ned's Atomic Dustbin and the swooning, swooping hysteria of Suede. If you've never heard it, you should check it out - you can probably download it for pennies.

This reminds me so much of a friend from Salisbury, Robert, who I worked with in catering for a few years, on and off. He was a rabid Eat fan, and was also one of the funniest guys I've ever known - really clever, capable and sharp, with a great eye for the absurd. He could also play air guitar and drums like no-one I've ever met. We did the adult access course together at Salisbury College, and went our seperate ways at the end of it. I hope he's OK - like many clever, funny people, he had a sort of underlying malaise that suggested he was never comfortable with himself. Maybe education helped him find his niche.

M-Beat featuring General Levy - 'Incredible'

If I told you that this record's USP was General Levy's ability to emit high-pitched sonar-like hiccups while delivering a high-paced ragga chat, you'd do well to be bemused. It's only on the b-side, with a more underground mix, that this kicks into gear more effectively, with cartoony stretched vocals and epileptic drums.

This reminds me of clubbing in Leeds, at Think Tank, late 90s. Hot, trebly, drunk on Red Stripe. The music really sounded like the future - broken, twisted, like the machines had actually taken control. My inability to take it seriously. The hilarity of time-stretched and speed-up vocals - I never understood that bit.

This is a mad record - if you focus on any one element it sounds absurd, but as a whole, it perfectly captures that mid-90s jungle scene. And it's also a right laugh to try and impersonate the General. Altogther now: 'I am de in-cred-HIC in-cred-HIC incredible general BOOYAKA! Selec-selec say HIC HIC HIC say sensaaayshonaaal!'