Some of you may have noticed it was rather snowy of late. Most of us became snow sunken dwellers of the ice storm, coated by a fluffy white blanket, that subsequently transformed itself into glazed skid patches of grey smush. I was beginning to envision a future of raves conducted on a frozen Thames, and next years Snow-Bombing to be held on home turf. But the ice has finally melted, returning my daily A to B to a civilised swagger, as the lop-sided frenetic penguin walk down the ice track to uni ceases to exist. Which is just as well as I was considering attaching snow stabilisers to my new Supra Skytops, which wouldn’t have looked as fresh as a Toyota Supra; but with the right alloys, I could’ve run the bike lane in style. Anyhows, here’s some tunes that have helped maintain my cool when on the ice track.
‘Rewind’ received a fair amount of airplay on MTV in 1999, and was later re-released on a compilation tape called ‘Braindance Bargain Sampler’, which I found for 4 bob on a dusty rack in manc the other day. Richard D James’ (aka. Aphex Twin) is responsible for this release on his legendary imprint Rephlex Records. Rephlex pioneered the convulsed sounds of ‘Braindance’ throughout the early 90′s, that hosted many leading experimental 
producers such as 808 State and Squarepusher to come to the forefront. ‘Rewind’ plays on a hip hop beat, which is over laid with robotic computer generated rapping, a truly inspired and amusing take on the world of hip hop.
Been mailing Rusja recently and it seems we have a few things in common, were both students who get hopelessly distracted by the sounds of digital tomfoolery. ‘Tears’ arrived in my inbox a few weeks back and i’ve been sessioning it since. It’a crazy amalgamation of UK sounds melded into tasteful bassline/dubstep rubs, murked over tech house beats. Nicely.
As far as tribal wasteland sounds go, it doesn’t get much closer to an African ethno underground than this. The wayward native chants are sampled so sweetly, that they called a curious cat which is my room mate Zac into my bass dungeon; where I was found having a small fit doing my rain-dance for the outback. It later rained that day in Manchester, mission accomplished.
