WOEBOT

Following on from my previous round-up of stuff "wot i got sent" here's another seven CDs which got through the stringent WOEBOT selection process and which are all thoroughly deserving of your attention. It struck me that there's a strong post-dance music thing going on with all these records.

1. Belbury Poly: The Owl's Map

How on earth do Belbury Poly wind up with these extraordinary tunings? I swear you had to actually have lived and made library music in the early 80's to master the zeit-timbres they conjoure up. What no-one has pointed out about Belbury yet (er, at least to my knowledge, gulp) is that they make Techno. Zooming forward into the future as fast as they spin back in to the past (more Wicker-man here than ever before) both axes spinning like gears on a children's toy gyroscope. My Ghost Box tattoo hurt like hell, but now the scabs are falling off it's looking brilliant.

2. A Guy Called Gerald: Proto Acid

This A Guy Called Gerald release on Andrea Parker's Lab Instinct label just made me sigh. It's called Proto-Acid, when as Gerald is at pains to point out, it has no 303s on it. Why the hell call it "Proto-Acid" then? I know as well as anyone else that the early Detroit and Chicago crew were making music at the time of Acid which was factored into what was termed Acieed when it didn't use that particular Roland machine, or more complicatedly used the 303 but didn't tweak it for the corrosive lysergic frequencies which it became associated with after Pierre's defining opus. I suppose the Musique or Gherkin labels would be the archetypes of this. Even if as Gerald remarks: "It’s how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadn’t happened in England" this is a convoluted reading of the history.

Y'see straight away one expects both a retro-tastic adventure and banks of squiggly frequencies; but one gets neither. There's nothing backward looking about this disc at all, this isn't one of those absurd Vibert-style stylistic re-runs, rather it's Gerald rather bossily showing the likes of Villalobos and Hawtin that he can do what they do. In terms of propulsiveness, efficiently and drama he does it better. Gerald performed a similar kind of ram-raid on jungle last year, surely putting numerous backs out with hilariously abusive PR about the scene which needed him to salvage it, but with less successful results.

"Proto Acid" is a curious thing. Twenty four individual tracks, seemingly designed with the mix's arc in mind, are segued seamlessly into a mix just over an hour long. I can't think of another long-player like it in concept? Tracks are just that. One doesn't get locked into individual eddys before being passed downstream to the next, the flow is more akin to being jettisoned at velocity through pipes of different material. As if in brutal contrast to his more recent song-led work there are no verse/chorus structures, the drama is entirely created through dynamics internal to the groove. To switch metaphors to one of driving: we glide through breathy tom-tom-ised gloom of "Auto Rebuild", past the plunging electro chords of "Space 1999" into the trebling percussion of "Droid" never pausing or regrouping. My personal highlight is the quite magnificent, sublime "Merlot Brougham" for which I'd trade all Aphex's dreary Analord stuff (from which same vein it emerges). "Feel the heat" is nearly as exquisite. One just has to flash on "Voodoo Ray" to remember that no-one passes energy around around a static groove with quite the same elan as Gerald.

Remember Gerald's reputation within house music has been tainted. "Voodoo Ray" brought him nothing but misery- he never got paid*, Automanikk was a flop for him at Sony, and it was really "Black Secret Technology" and break-beats which brought money with the fame. However my favorite AGCG moments have almost all been of that rottweiler-packing, uzi-toting brand of house he's peddled in his down-time: "All Night Baby" on Juice Box, "Universe 2000" and "Forever Changing" from 28 Gun Bad Boy, Inertia's "Nowhere to Run" on Carl Craig's Retroactive. So great to hear him rocking at 4/4 with the confidence of a don. U must check this. I swear blind you'll love it.

* Though before he dredges this up again I'd like to remind him that he owes me a couple of hundred quid...

3. Kode9 and the Spaceape: Memories of the Future

The first time I heard this it really rubbed me up the wrong way. Mainly down down to Spaceape's MC-ing. I'm convinced that patois has evolved since the mid-seventies and that no-one actually sounds like this. In One Drop for instance, the MCs manage to sound different to vintage toasters. There must be a degree of quotation in, not so much his lyrics, but in the tenor of his delivery which is defiantly classicist.

Reynolds is right to point to LKJ, Spaceape is very much in his mould, his intellektual bass-heavy delivery pitched up a quarter between MC and mellifluous singjay. I did find this retro element a little off-putting because the chat's covert effect, dread, became a little mannered. I didn't "buy" it. I much prefer the tracks like the excellent "Quantum" when he reigns in the stylisation, stops rolling every "hole" opening every "gate" and sounds, well, natural. It's almost as though expecting one to swallow the Ballard-ian poetry *and* the yard threat is too tall an order.

But recently I've picked it up again and it does work nicely as a mood-piece. It's rich in tone and atmosphere and full of lovely touches like the depressed accordion on "Glass" (like Danny Weed's signature sonic drunk and broke). Also I dig the The Specials overtones as much as the next man. It's a worthy successor to the Burial LP and in twenty years time the two will undoubtedly be remembered as the sound of 2006. Thanks to Steve for sending me a copy, especially given my misgivings about Dubstep.

4. Mordant Music: Dead Air

Baron Mordant has been sending me stuff for a couple of years and each time the results surpass the last. Last year's "The Tower" was good, but in its drive towards austerity was a little thin on detail. Dead Air which I've had since May (gulp) and which has lingered on my desktop like a marshland mist, is on the other hand tailored to perfection.

Interesting how some of the best things this past year (this and the Various stuff) have been faux-dubstep. In the past things like "Fungle" and much Intelligent Techno, in other words where self-styled artistes/auteurs have claimed to better an original genre, it has always been a turn-off to me.

5. Xylitol

Clenching it tight to his bosom. I'm their biggest fan. If I had a label I'd sign them.

6. Sacred Selections

This project was great fun. I got hold of Matt Stokes the artist who did it and he very kindly sent me the sumptuously packaged CD. Qua music its a strange thing, on the one hand the slightly elephantine organs struggle with all needlepoint dynamics of the music (Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore and Black Metal), and on the other the orchestration doesn't really do justice to the breadth of the instrument's sound. Also I'm afraid to say that the recording is very distant (a whole heap better than my dictaphone though) and you really want to have microphones down the pipes to get the volume up-close.

Matt did include an archive recording for the St Matthew's at Westminster performance on the 4th of May, the one I attended, and it's a much better recording and a more confident performance. I sent a copy of this to Simon and I sent Matt a copy of Reynolds's old "Pirate Radio Madness" tape (which I ripped to CD) and also Dj Wrongspeed's "Pirate Flavas". It's all art innit. If I remember rightly Mr. Wrongspeed was at the concert as well.

7. Si Begg: My Style

I don't really know anything about Si Begg, but he sent me this and it's really good Reese-bassline/breakbeat madness.