Jumpin' and Pumpin'
And finally. The Future Sound of London have a particularly bad rep these days, their post-Papua New Guinea brand of Intelligent Techno is generally viewed as being the least salvageable strain of dance music of its era. This might have something to do with designer Buggy G Riphead's rococo sleeves of the period. Reminiscent of the corniest visual excesses of Prog, in fairness these only reflected the unrestrained sonic orgy unleashed by extended sample-lengths within the music itself. By the mid-nineties music technology had reached a point whereby dreamers like Cobain and Dougans actually got the kit they were after, and moved from that fruitful (but technically frustrating) position of being limited by their hardware's capabilities.
Long before their profile as Q-man's electronic music, in the years from 1989 to 1993 before they signed to Virgin, TFSOL put out a whole slew of wild music on the Jumpin' and Pumpin' label; a weird abandoned interzone between Ragga Ardkore and Intelligent Techno. A great deal of these tracks are seriously 'avin it though certainly not all of them are by the egghead duo. Jungle misfits Genaside II put out a handful of classic lumpen breakbeat tracks on the label (think the Jungle Brothers with bad vibes and no rapping: "Death of The Kamikazee", "The Alchemist" and "The Motiv"), there are EPs by Flag (later The Jimpster), and Adrkore refugess like DJ Freshtrax and DJ HMS. Indeed, in the absence of evidence, logic dictates that it wasn't their label as such. Quite soon it established itself commercially with a series Rave Hits compilations, however their man Riphead's really very appealing, uniformly 8-bit, cyber-punk sleeves makes it feel thus. Also I suspect that the two must have acted in the capacity as unofficial A&R men in these early days.
Brian and Garry's tracks made under aliases like Yage, Smart Systems, and Indo Tribe like "Owl", "Drive", "Tingler" and "Coda Coma" inhabit a wonderfully improbable terrain. As ruff as the those most vicious urban Ardkore they have hidden depths, deliciously echoing bottom-ends, exquisitely crafted bleep-sequences and four dimensional breakbeats. Indeed it's the use of breakbeats that singles them out from the rest of Techno's slightly pious re-workings of the glacial Detroit sound. Definitely worth investigating.