Bleep

Above Board Projects put together a trip through the alternative and diverse electronic styles cropping up all over the British Isles from 1992 to 1996, a time of economic and political strife where dance and electronic music not only persevered, but journeyed into the outer reaches of what was possible.

The foundational Sheffield unit Cabaret Voltaire open this collection with the mysterious and nocturnal ‘Soul Vine’, true to its album’s title Plasticity as a techno beat constantly morphs over the moody bassline, meanwhile Ultramarine’s ‘Happy Land’ serves as a theme song, picturesque and smooth against Richard Wyatt’s satirical and sarcastic lyrics. From the classic Bytes album, ‘Carceres Ex Novum’ is maximalist sonic architecture with intricate layers of walloping clockwork beats and adventurous melodies, and Matthew Herbert’s ‘Housewife’ is a slab of funky, forward thinking house that could have easily been made 30 minutes ago, let alone 30 years.

Aphex Twin under his Strider. B. name initiates Volume 2 with buffeting punches wrestling against breezier synth melodies in a techno workout of epic proportions, while Radioactive Lamb follow up on a conveyor belt of heavy beat ballistics leading into blissful, airy pads. Richard H. Kirk returns as Sandoz on ‘Armed Response’, with military snares and drums cut by machetes and a deep dub bass tying it together, echoed in Zone Smut’s ‘Sub Dub Rub’ where a remix plunges the track into low frequency murky waters.

Bringing some sought after rarities back into print, Happy Land revisits a particularly explorative era in UK dance music.