DEBC - 'The Pulse'

This starts out quite jolly and floaty - intelligent jungle, they used to call it - before a filtered synth line snakes in under the door, itchy as a swarm of flying ants, and expands into a jittery buzzsaw hook.

This reminds me of frantic drum and bass sets at Dust in Leeds. Frantic because in the space of 4 hours, we'd squeeze in as many different genres as could - ska, nu-metal, house, disco, pop cheese, rock. I mostly did the dance slots, which would be me trying to play 10 records in 15 minutes. The crowd loved it, but it was hard work.

This record was good for about 90 seconds - basically, the intro and the first drop. Then, quick out into something a bit more recognisable - the drum and bass remix of 'Ready or Not' by The Fugees.

Mindless, sweaty, happy nights.

Tags: prototype, drum and bass, DEBC, 1999

Beck - 'Odelay'

The first thing you notice about this record is that it's super-heavyweight vinyl - audiophile 180gm, or something. It gives the impression of quality and, dare I say, phatness before the needle ever touches the groove.

Beck Hanson is essentially a surrealist artist. His musical career was something of an accident, catapulted as he was into the mainstream by the single 'Loser'. The rest of that album, 'Mellow Gold' - we'll be getting to that at some point - is a whimsical, downbeat set of doodles that wouldn't have seen the light of day without the chart-crushing juggernaut of 'Loser'.

'Odelay' is the sound of a white boy finding his dancing feet, releasing the funk, and cutting a fiery swathe across an indie dancefloor. The classic surrealist trademarks are all here - unusual juxtapositions, dreams made real, a strange hallucinatory quality pervading everything - and yet this is surrealist art you can dance to. It has a musically timeless quality to it that means it could be anywhere from Sgt. Pepper to the present day.

What does it remind me of? It reminds me of seeing Beck live at Leeds Festival in (I think) 2000. He wasn't quite at the peak of his powers, but there was a feeling that, as he boogied manically in front of 20,000 people, he couldn't put a foot wrong. He evoked the spirit of David Byrne in 'Stop Making Sense', which is a must-see gig-movie. He epitomised coolness, was slightly deranged, and was backed by DJ Swamp, who performed the most deck-defying feats of vinyl manipulation I'd ever seen. A year later, I found the 'DJ Swamp Skip-Proof Scratch Tool', and I was sold on the way of the wicky-wicky.

I'm not sure that Beck ever got any better than this, but crucially, he never got much worse either.

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.