Double LP
Smartly curated two LP set conceived as a tribute to the Telepathic Fish club night that ran in London during the early 90s at the point when an energised and mutable dance music scene was morphing into something a little more introspective and immersive. We've seen a number of similar projects by the likes of Music From Memory, though what marks this collection as slightly different is that it's pieced together by the four main individuals who hosted the party, reflecting what they deemed to be the key tracks of the era. As such, it forms a distinct, personalised narrative of its own, one that makes its own sense of featuring a group like Insides (ordinarily more dreampop than ambient in my estimation, so it's nice to hear them in a different context here) alongside the tripped out acid jazz of Nightmares On Wax and Richard D. James in mildly euphoric Caustic Window mode. Clubland looked and sounded a lot different then it seems - progressive, idyllic, highly inventive, genuinely psychedelic at times. And seemingly very smart. Hard to not be seduced by the nostalgia of it, whether you were there to experience it first hand or not. There's a quote from Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash on the front, though listening to these songs now I can't help thinking instead of Hunter S. Thompson's romanticised vision of the times from Fear and Loathing...: "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . So now... with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
FFO: Dream Dolphin, Global Communications, Michal Turtle, Seefeel, LFO
