The missing #172 upload (no, I didn’t notice either until a couple of weeks later). This is one of the tapes my ex-wife had squirrelled away that she wanted digitised and it’s one I didn’t have a copy of, a short set drifting from jazz to hip hop to funk and pop. The set starts with a classic Solid Steel jingle, ‘The Ninth World’ read, I think, by Matt Black’s dad.

Around the mid-late 90s the Ninja crew were regularly DJing across Europe and thus had access to piles of ECM jazz at cheap prices and bassist Barre Philips was a particular favourite of mine along with Jon Abercrombie and Eberhard Weber. Stanley Clarke’s ‘Concerto for Jazz / Rock Orchestra’ was on my radar as I was so into the sample at the end of DJ Shadow’s In/Flux on the Headz 2 compilation that I had to track it down. I ran upon a copy of his Journey To Love LP in the now closed Discovel (sp?) record shop in Montreal – you’ll know the part when you hear it. Echoes was an alias of my old friend Bundy K. Brown, ex of Tortoise and a future collaborator at this point in time, ‘Continental Drift’ was new back when this was recorded and was apparently very influential on a young Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet. Bundy worked in the Chicago record store Dusty Groove and was a little more keyed into what was happening on the electronic music scene than the other members of the band and made several sample-heavy beats and jazz-infused tracks and remixes around this time which caught my ear.

There’s an identified track at the end of the Echoes single, a distorted drum thing for a minute or so but I can’t identify it. KRS-One’s ‘Step Into A World’ was also new around 1997, transposing ‘The Champ’ into a new form alongside Blondie’s ‘Rapture’ which is why the Mohawks original comes next. Part 2’s ‘Automatic’ and ‘Prelude To Cycle 6’ were both taken from his sole EP for Jazz Fudge which was also current and one of the series of sleeves I put together for the label. The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’ slots between them and needs no introduction, not sure why I felt the need to feature it here though. Water Melon’s cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ is something you wouldn’t immediately equate with the Japanese group but it totally works and is just one of the treasures to be found of the Pussyfoot label’s ‘Fish Smell Like Cat’ compilation album.

Track list:
Barre Phillips – Mountain Scape
Stanley Clarke – Concerto For Jazz / Rock Orchestra
Echoes – Continental Drift
KRS One – Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight)
The Mohawks – Champ
Part 2 – Automatic
The Human League – Being Boiled
Part 2 – Prelude To Cycle 6
Water Melon – Albatross