Rare & Unreleased turns back the clock, washing away the last twenty five years to return to those halcyon days. Found on forgotten DAT tapes and gleamed from lost compilations, this four tracker focuses on DeGiorgio’s Future/Past alias. Rare & Unreleased revives the analogue warmth that characterized the 90s, the complex future scapes carved and shaped into forms later known as as IDM.
I missed out on the 90s. Well, not entirely. I was there, but in terms of electronics I missed out. Being a seven year old in rural Ireland I had neither access, nor the inclination, to trawl through record store crates. By the time adolescence had dawned it was 2000 and a whole different style had emerged, alongside a burgeoning internet with dizzying speeds in the Irish midlands I can assure you. On hearing the sounds of the 1990s, via compilations such as the seminal Artificial Intelligence and likeminded labels like B12, a musical relationship was formed. Yet problems still remained. Tracking down records released in the UK, half a decade before, in Ireland, records released in limited batches of five hundred (hefty enough by today’s standards), proved next to impossible.
The Neo Ouija forum was responsible for much of my schooling in British techno. In fact it was the Neo Ouija forum that introduced me to Leopolda DeRosa, led me to igloomag and first brought Applied Rhythmic Technology (A.R.T) to my attention. Leo (aka LeRosa) was the first electronic music head I ever met and he had a wealth of knowledge to share, nowadays he shares his own excellent sounds. I remember the pangs of jealousy when Leo told me he had found one of the holy grails of UK Techno in the secondhand bin of Freebird Records just off O Connell St; Applied Rhythmic Technology’s The Philosophy of Sound and Machine, a collection that epitomized that style and captured that time as AI had done. That jealousy soon turned to gratitude with just a few words: “I’ll stick in on a minidisc for ya!”
From then on I was hooked, flicking through Napster and eBay and managed to track down a minidisc here and there. For those who, like myself, missed out, A.R.T. was founded by Kirk DeGiorgio, one of the mythical founders of British techno. DeGiorgio was responsible for signing acts such as Stasis and The Black Dog to the label as early as 1993. His own productions blossomed on a range of labels. Under pseudonyms like Phenomenya, As One and Future/Past, a rich and textured sound was extolled.
Rare & Unreleased turns back the clock, washing away the last twenty five years to return to those halcyon days. Found on forgotten DAT tapes and gleamed from lost compilations, this four tracker focuses on DeGiorgio’s Future/Past alias. First up is a classic, “Hyperspace.” The raw rhythms of the original and the samples of the R&S remix, tracks now some twenty two years old, ruffle this unreleased version. The change comes in the smoothness of the undertones. Strings sway on warm southern currents as blips and bleeps twinkle. “TRY 2004 Funk Mix 2” follows. Taken from an album as rare as hens’ teeth, Applied Rhythmic Technology from 1993, the track is driven by skittering snares, jittery hi-hats and steady kick drums. Hovering over this assortment floats a heady yet subtle melody, one that dips in and out from the jagged rocks below. That same intricate drum machine program is on display on “Locator.” From the seminal Objets D’art 92-95 collection, a funk laden work of future dance is woven. Groove filled chords a punctuated by full bodied beats for a track that deserves to be played out. The closer is the least refined of the quartet. Following the Future/Past path, glitched up beats are further muddied by squirming keys and dubby pads in this sweaty Detroit inspired stomper.
The pull of 90s machine music has never worn off. Of course there is superb material coming out these days, as ever, but there is just that bit more magic when it comes to disparate artists who attempted to release something new through PO box addresses and fax numbers. A.R.T. and Kirk DeGiorgio were pivotal parts of this scene, and still are. Dusted down, this quartet productions beams with the same incandescent brightness of when they were first cut. There’s good reason why DeGiorgio was, and is, so respected in electronic music circles. Rare & Unreleased revives the analogue warmth that characterized the 90s, the complex future scapes carved and shaped into forms later known as as IDM. It might not be 1993 anymore, and in all fairness that’s no bad thing. Nevertheless, drop the needle, close your eyes and you will immediately be brought back to a time and sound that paved the way for modern machine musicians.
Rare & Unreleased is available on De:Tuned. [Juno | Delsin]
