A brisk and bumpy trek through the past, revealing the origins of electronic music as envisioned by three friends in a mere 16 minute sonic foray.
The burgeoning era of underground electronica
Recorded just down the street from Warp Records’ Sheffield record shop in the early 90s, Bunker Studios was comprised of a massive old mixing desk, Yamaha monitors, a handful of Korg and Roland outboard synths, drum machines, and an Akai S3000. The three 20-year-old electronic music fanatics (Room, Eba, and Jules Hyman — aka Bunker 3) drafted these tracks around the burgeoning era of underground electronica where artists like LFO, Cabaret Voltaire and early Detroit techno pioneers had already created a buzz.
The results are first-rate (and also recently remastered) with Room’s “Greetings” diving into sweeping melodic bleep techno and broken beats as Eba’s glitchy Mbuki Mvuki-infused “Elephungk” casts a bubbling groove. EP1—hopefully signifying that there’s more in the pipeline—sheds light on the mood of early electronic music and its alluring soundscapes; mixing shuffled/Sheffield breaks with techno, echoed melodies, and pulsing dance-friendly rhythms. “Beonow,” on the other hand, reveals Room’s darker shadows where intermittent noises and disheveled drums collide with faraway drones for only a brief minute and a half while Jules Hyam’s “Circular Argument” finds mysterious exp-electronics melding The Detroit Escalator Co. styled blips and bleeps with subtle reverberating grooves that take us back 30 years.
A brisk and bumpy trek through the past, revealing the origins of electronic music as envisioned by three friends in a mere 16 minute sonic foray. Bunker 3 is on our watch (and listening) list as we look forward to EP2.
EP1 is available on TruthTable. [Bandcamp]
