Autechre "Peel Session" Warp Records WAP112CD 1999 (25:29)
Milk DX (6:04)
Inhake 2 (8:36)
Drane (10:49)
Boards of Canada "Peel Session" Warp Records WAP114CD 1999 (16:51)
Aquarius (Version 3) (6:24)
Happy Cycling (7:56)
Olson (Version 3) (2:31)
The Black Dog "Peel Session" Warp Records WAP115CD 1999 (31:45)
Shadehead (5:58)
Rise Up (5:03)
Simperton (5:33)
Rue (6:16)
Psycosyin (8:55)
Autechre is Booth/Brown, Boards of Canada is Michael Sandison
and Marcus Eoin.
Overall impression: good. These 3 relatively cheap
cds (around $7.25 apiece) are a welcome blast from the recent past
to the 'IDM' sound of the early to mid-90's, pre-drum 'n bass, drill
'n bass, etc. The Ae and Black Dog sessions were recorded in October of
'95 and the BoC was recorded in July of '98. Nothing here is suprising
to a fan of any of these 3 groups, each session captures their respective
sound at the time of recording. Ae's session features 3 songs that, to
my knowledge, are not available elsewhere. Ae does here what they do best
... subtle layering of sounds and samples that build up into exotic melodic
hip-hop-like jams similar to Ae's output around that time, "Anti-EP"
and "Garbage". BoC's session features 3 songs from last year's
debut album, "Music
Has the Right to Children". "Aquarius" and "Happy
Cycling" are 2 of BoC's groovy mid-tempo beat driven numbers and "Olson"
is one of the beat-less ambient shorts. There's not much differcnce between
the album and peel session versions of these tracks. The Black Dog's session
has 4 songs that again, to the best of my knowledge, are not available
elsewhere ("Psycosyin" appeared on '94's excellent "Spanners"
album). These songs are in the same vein as several of the Spanners tracks
... playful, quirky, midtempo grooves. Of the 3, I'd say that the Ae and
Black Dog are essential, but the BoC is not, the songs are too similar
to the album versions and the cd is too short. Very simple (cheap!) artwork
binds the series together, and each cd is made to look like a cd-r which
is amusing since IDM'ers have been trading cd-r copies of these shows for
years. What's really interesting (and frustrating) is that Warp could have
just released 1 cd with all of these tracks, seeing as how they total about
74 minutes ...
Where did I get these cds? - mail order via Rioux's Records. Email Jason.