I purchased this excellent 2CD compilation this weekend. It's a benefit
compilation for The Big Issue Foundation, which is apparently dedicated
to helping the homeless in the UK. It has a host of unreleased tracks
and remixes by the likes of Orbital, 808 State, The Black Dog and
probably others that I'm unaware of, plus some juicy older tracks. Both
CDs clock in at over 70 minutes, and are awash in d&b, dub, ambience,
trance and IDM. The Bandulu, Aloof and Moody Boyz tracks fall a bit
short of the quality of the rest, but the overall feel of these two
discs is just superb.
Nine out of ten.
Relevant info (with track-by-track analysis following):
Various Artists
Foundations: Coming Up From The Streets
Feedback Communications
FCL002CD
CD1: 11 tracks, 70:06
CD2: 13 tracks, 73:20
CD1 track listing:
Radiohead - Talk Show Host (The Black Dog Remix)
Orbital - The Tranquiliser Busy Tranquilising
A Guy Called Gerald/GK - Mellow Madness
Underworld - Spikee
808 State - Mondays
Fluke - Stunt Bubble
Bomb The Bass - Hanging In Midair
Ultramarine - Russian Roulette
Fun-Da-Mental - Mother India - Spirit Of The Tiger (Moody Boyz Remix)
The Black Dog - Four Friends And A Microphone
Scanner - Jat Scheelan
CD2 track listing:
DJ Evolution featuring MC Teabag - Escape From Tokyo
Bandulu - Bil'Let
System 7 - Big Sky City (Jacob's Optical Stairway Remix)
Leftfield - Space Shanty (Tribal Mix)
Menni - Distant Lands
Future Loop Foundation - Strange Fever
Egebamyasi - Bambient
Massive Attack - Suck Me Up Dub
Healing Arts featuring Jane Walker - Only Love (Will Lift Us Up)
DJ Crystl - Let It Roll (Remix)
The Aloof - Bitter Sweet (Lemon In The Honey Mix)
Atlas - Saynaha
Moody Boyz - March 19th
Radiohead - Trip-hoppy beats, whiny Britpop vox. Works very well,
actually.
Orbital - Very D&B-oriented. Starts off with all percussion, then
a tinkly overhead melody joins in. Finally develops into
a "real" Orbital song, but takes a little long to get there.
A Guy Called Gerald/GK - Long intro, then breaks out into D&B with
vocal samples. Pretty cool, occasional mad
breaks.
Underworld - An oldie-but-goodie. Mostly trancy, adds occasional pings
and whizzes over 12+ minutes. Totally incomprehensible
altered-vocal intonations.
808 State - After being disappointed by most of _Don_Solaris_, this
turns out to be my favorite track on the comp. Disconnected
intro evolves into chuggin' beats with sunny melody,
guitar squeals and male chanting. This'll stick in my
head for a while.
Fluke - When people say that Fluke reminds them of Underworld, it might
be because of songs like these. Trancy and deliberate.
Bomb The Bass - Might have fit perfectly on the Nearly God album, but
no Tricky here. Wispy and evocative.
Ultramarine - A great insturmental that sounds a lot like some of the
tracks on their first album, with some D&B thrown in for
good measure. Melancholy and surprisingly effective.
Fun-Da-Mental - Spacey music and jazzy beats. Subdued.
The Black Dog - Busy percussion here. Doesn't develop much over 2
minutes, sadly.
Scanner - No phone conversations here, just trip-hoppy beats laid over
decidedly sad slowly-paced synths. If the homeless
organization this comp is benefitting wanted to take one
track and make it a soundtrack to a film on the subject,
this would be it.
DJ Evolution - Fast trance with Ian-Curtis-styled vox. Not much else to
say, really. Pretty good one as trance goes.
Bandulu - I love the music on this, very bleepy and disorienting from
a stereo perspective, but the vocal really ruins it. Very
plain unremarkable deadpan singing. A shorter instrumental
version of this would have been much better.
System 7 - This is excellent. Primo IDM-ish D&B percussion with
occasional melody awakenings. Loads of fun.
Leftfield - Less dubby than most Leftfield tracks, trancy intro leads
into tribal drums. Reminds me of "Afro-Left" a little but
with no vocal.
Menni - Slow shuffling beats, sampled spoken word, abstract melody.
Future Loop Foundation - Heavy melody with fast pingy stuff on top,
pop-up vocal. Somewhat D&B-ish.
Egebamyasi - Beatless ambient, with subsonic gurgles, soothing train
whistles, very silly preacher sample and even sillier
whizzing noises. Another of my favorites.
Massive Attack - It's a Mad Professor remix, but it wasn't on
_No_Protection_, probably because it's not quite as
bass-heavy as those, but still rather dubby.
Distanced ethereal vocal from Tracy Thorn.
Healing Arts - A vocal track, but it doesn't get in the way of the
wicked dubbiness of the music. A bit jazzy, a bit
funky, makes me shiver in places.
DJ Crystl - D&B all the way, bay-bee!! Very well executed.
The Aloof - This one is trying to be trip-hop, but it ends up just
sounding flat. The vocal doesn't help much either.
Atlas - Trancy and metallic, weird breaks, unusual transitions. Fun
stuff.
Moody Boyz - Piano and mid-tempo beats. Pretty in places. Would have
been better with different (or missing) beats, perhaps.
--
Adam J Weitzman "Getting [your computer] to work is no more
Individual, Inc. difficult than building a nuclear reactor
weitzman@individual.com from wristwatch parts using only your teeth."
http://www.individual.com - Dave Barry