Double LP
Following their reissues of the two Art Form compilations, WRWTFWW continues its excavation of the FORM@ RECORDS archive with a first time vinyl pressing of the seven track remix collection first released by the Japanese imprint in 1999. Supremely obscure gear of course, perhaps moored by its location in Japan and format of preference (though it was the golden age of the CD, you'd think a lot of this would have travelled a lot further were it originally also on record...), but it remains absolutely on the money for its era, a byproduct of Warp's international influence in shifting dance music into less chartered terrain. The release of their Artificial Intelligence comp is cited as a direct catalyst, and the DNA of that landmark collection is clear of day here, from the mutations of techno, house, hardcore, ambient and electro, through to the inter-label remix connections (much like the Warp10+3 boxset), suggestive of its own internal language and ecosystem. I'm not sure I can say if there's anything specifically regional about these productions (and maybe dance music was an international language anyhow?), though they're certainly inventive and immaculate in ways that seem to easily avoid pastiche and command replay. And what remains particularly seductive here is that all the music comes from the same milieu and moment in time, a scene, however small at the time, captured in amber, its energy still a glow. There's a lot of retrospective compilations now that cover similar territory (see the EMU works collection, the Music From Memory series in particular), but this comes straight from the source - as it was! - and is especially impactful for it.
FFO: Artificial Intelligence, The Black Dog, Global Communications, Electro Music Union/Sinoesin/Xonox
