Back for part 2 of the set from last week where Matt Black and I recorded a Solid Steel session in my bedroom as the KISS FM studios were booked out. This hour is a mix of the two of us but it’s hard to determine who played what so I’ve left the thing whole, the tape also started with Cypress Hill’s ’Scooby Doo’ but it was incomplete so I’ve cut it. I kick off with a snatch of the Psychic Warriors Ov Gaia’s majestic ‘Obsidian’ remix before Digital Underground’s ‘Packet Man’ – a tale of a sexual experience sold in a pill. A short snatch of a DJ Spike track precedes the newly released ‘Sound Of The Police’ from KRS 1’s Return Of The Boom Bap LP, a virtual classic as soon as it hit the streets before a ‘pause for the cause’ and into a bit of Matt on the decks. The Tape Beatles had become a spoken word staple on the show since the Orb visited and hipped Matt & Jon to their work and the first two tracks from their Music With Sound album feature here. Steve Reich was also a mainstay of shows, continually popping up over the years in different mixes with his minimalist works, joined here by a spoken word piece, read by Matt’s dad. Out of this comes another ambient classic, ‘Flurescence’ (spelling as on the record) from Jonah Sharp’s debut EP as Spacetime Continuum, another track that got many outings in the early 90s.

A NSFW sketch about vinyl opens the next section with a a near ‘C bomb’ moment quickly cut with a fader. Tournesol’s ‘Holy Cow’ was a bumping trip hop-y moment on their Kokotsu album for R&S, followed by early Chemical Brothers when they were still masquerading under the Dust Brothers’ moniker with ‘If You Kling To Me I’ll Klong To You’. Brian Eno’s ‘Alternative 3’ from Music For Films creeps in with the exorcism from the I Am Lucifer album which I only finally found last year, always a favourite of Matt’s and one he used extensively on the show. The Future Sound of London’s ‘Lifeforms (Path 2)’ was new at the time too, what a time to be alive! I wish I knew what the track following was but it’s gone and Shazam doesn’t know either. Likewise with the burbling acid track after that although I do recognise some bits of David Sylvian & Holger Czukay’s ‘Plight & Premonition’ in there somewhere but it might be as a sample. Ah, here comes Global Communication according to Matt although I can’t identify the track and neither can he (I’m not entirely sure it’s them actually). Matt’s dad crops up again reading a passage about ‘the 9th world’, “How does an eye work? How does a foot work?” – another spoken word favourite. It’s all beginning to blur into one ambient mass around this stage until we get to Attica Blues’ ‘Contemplating Jazz (D’Afro’s Picky Head Dub)’ which plays us out only to be rudely interrupted by the KISS news jingle.

Track list:
Psychic Warriors of Gaia – Obsidian (Organically Decomposed)
Digital Underground – Packet Man
KRS 1 – Sound Of The Police
The Tape Beatles – Beautiful State / Green, Blue Beautiful Place
Steve Reich – Six Pianos
Spacetime Continuum – Flurescence
Monty Python – Vinyl record sketch
Tournesol – Holy Cow
Dust Brothers – If You Kling To Me I’ll Klong To You
Brian Eno – Alternative 3
The Future Sound Of London – Lifeforms (Path 2)
Unknown – Unknown
Unknown – Unknown (Global Communication?)
Attica Blues – Contemplating Jazz (D’Afro’s Picky Head Dub)