I picked up the new Virtual Farmer LP by Mike Dred and Peter Green on
Friday. It's a good one - strange, definately "experimental" for want of
a better word. I listened to it over the speakers in my local shop.
Other people wanting to hear the latest r&b CDs had to wait, which isn't
particularly amusing in it's own right. What was were their expressions!
Especially during "Cak Kake"'s free jazz style parpings!
Anyhow, listening to Rephlex releases in the shop often doesn't help as
you only get your initial reaction (which is often just "what the..."
and you don't really hear the depth (ie if there is any!)), so I was
wary about getting it, but did shell out. In among the mess (a mixture
of freaky electro beats, film score atmospherics, insane descents into
filtery deconstructed noise and generally everything but the kitchen
sink) there is, gasp, a proper album in there - one that is pretty
challenging, but definately rewards multiple listens, making it the best
thing I've heard on Rephlex in a long long time. So much so, in fact,
that it's made me go back and dig out a 12" from 1995 on Mike Dreds
Machine Codes label. Which brings me onto my question. Does anyone have
a Machine Codes discography? The 12" I have is:
"Code D" - Mike Dred and Peter Green are "Beyond The Box".
There are four tracks:
Em-One : One-Oh-Five Cornucopian (Mike Dred + Peter Green)
Em-Two : Wash The Telly (Mike Dred)
See-Three : Modus Vivendi
See-Four : Monkey System One-Oh-Seven
First thing I noticed on returning to it is that "One-Oh-Five
Cornucopian" is the same as "Cornucopian 105" from the LP. I loved this
EP the first time I got it, but the track that stood out was "Wash The
Telly"'s electro beatfreaking within a normal 4/4 framework (great for
mixing with). Now I'm taking a fancy to the other tracks too. Modus
Vivendi is similar to "Film Score" from the LP, but a slower score,
maybe even better, while Monkey Systems is Drexciya style squidge techno
vs digitally processed drones, again in the same style as the
collaborations on the LP (making me think that the LP has probably been
in the Rephlex pipeline for some time).
My additional queries are:
Are the other Machine Codes like this one? I don't care as much for Mike
Dred's "Kosmik Kommando" acid stuff which is much more straight ahead.
Are there any more tracks from the EPs that featured on "Virtual
Farmer"?
Can you still get the Machine Codes compilation, which - if I remember
rightly - was a 5 x 12" pack containing all the releases in full?
Are the Peter Green film score-esque tracks played live by an orchestra?
Sometime they sound as if they are but they're also quite synthetic at
the same time. Either way they're very nice industrial/fairground/tv
theme symphonies.
I guess I could just e-mail the guys themselves seeing as their
addresses are printed on the "Virtual Farmer" sleeve. Maybe we can
persuade 'em to get on IDM. A few more musicians wouldn't go amiss here
these days (no offense to any musicians who are already on this list but
are not quite at IDM star status (which of course doesn't exist, this
being faceless techno and all that. Or so we'd like to believe. Pop
music?! Pah.)
Graham.