Here’s the mix that was on the same CDr as last week’s upload, something that had appeared two weeks earlier at the tail end of 2002. Around the beginning of the 00’s I was pretty heavily into the bootleg/mash up scene and for several years my Solid Steel mixes were full of them. I do cringe at some of them sometimes when listening back, not all have aged well but I like to think I would at least choose the more interesting ones that took the songs to different places. The opening of this set features two downtempo Beatles numbers (hence the title on the disc), Bad Production of which was actually pressed up on a 7” although I can’t find that on Discogs. You wouldn’t get away with that these days! Or you’d have to wait 8 months to do it.

The excellent Beatle-esque Future Sound of London remix of Robert Miles’ ‘Paths’ sounds like a precursor to their Amorphous Androgynous workouts a few years later. I’ve got a feeling this is the single edit version, must get hold of the 7 min version which can be had on Discogs for around £1. More Sixtoo from the as then unreleased CDr he gave me, this turned up the next year on the Outremont Mainline Runs Across Sunset 12” on Vertical Form. There’s also a bit of Alvin Lucier’s ‘I Am Sitting In A Room’ mixed in there, not sure why or where from. The gorgeous Sutekh track, ‘Privacy’ comes from the album Fell which I don’t remember owning but glad I do/did.

JG Thirlwell makes two appearances in his Manorexia guise although I can only identify one, plus a snatch of Beatles near the end. The Japan-only bonus track from Boards of Canada’s Geogaddi LP mixes in using samples from Tony Schwartz Records The Sound of Children LP (Children And God). Food is/was a band front by Iain Ballamy who I found via their first couple of albums on Feral Records, the covers of which were designed by Dave McKean and came in beautifully illustrated card boxes. The skipping CD start is what gave this set its name, ‘Freebonky‘ is from their second album, Organic & GM Food. I think the Steinski track is the Burroughs vocal sampling although it’s hard to tell. 80’s Baby’s version of Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’ is where I start to cringe, these were gentle versions of known pop songs made for babies and there were a whole string of them. I added a subtle bit of the original now and again and a monologue about driving from George Carlin but the joke wears thin very fast after that.

Tracklist:
Bad Production – Bad Production
Avril Plays the Beatles – Becoz
Robert Miles – Paths (FSOL Cosmic Jukebox mix)
Sixtoo – Transfer Please, Perfect Wednesday
Suktekh – Privacy
Manorexia – Canaries in the Mineshaft
Manorexia – Edison Medicine
Boards of Canada – From One Source All things
Food – Freebonky
Steinski – Audio Collage 6
80’s Baby – Cars
Gary Numan – Cars

Given that the new Batman film is about to be released, the tenuous reason I picked this set out is the Snoop Dogg opener, ‘Batman & Robin’ which just bangs with DJ Premier production and offbeat fight sounds. A voiceover from an LSD documentary (I forget which but it may be a Negativland radio show) forms the glue that holds this mix together and accompanies Pedro’s excellent Steve Reich/Phillip Glass-esque remix of Cinema Record Music Library’s ‘Lost’. The RJD2 remix of N.O.W’s ’70’s 80’s’ I’d completely forgotten and it sounds super fresh to my ears 20 years later, perfect summer tune, this is why I love unearthing these old mixes.

During a visit to Canada on tour we passed through Halifax in Nova Scotia and hooked up with Sixtoo who furnished me with a CDR of untitled music, this became ‘Outremont Mainline Runs Across The Sunset’ on Vertical Form and the LSD doc is back over the top of this mellow instrumental. This period of his output is so underrated, definitely one of the more interesting producers from this era before he switched up his style. I don’t remember where the Brian Bennet & Alan Hawkshaw tune came from but it’s mostly likely an excellent French Jazz comp called The Urge compiled by Victor Kiswell with a track from different countries around the world.

I have no idea why Stephanie McKay didn’t make it bigger, her earthy, beautiful vocals sounded so much more appealing than others who came after her and forced a ‘soulful’ delivery. This track was listed as ‘Bluesin’ It’ but I think it’s actually ‘Rising Tide’, track her debut down on Go! Beat, produced by Geoff Barrow from Portishead and Tim Saul from Earthling. The Cliff Martinez tracks that play out are both from the Solaris soundtrack, hard to pick two favourites, the whole album is sublime, must revisit that too, love those pure tones. This set is a real mixed bag but it all makes sense to me and every track stands up two decades later.

Track list:
Snoop Dogg feat. Lady of Rage – Batman & Robin
Cinema Recorded Music Library – Lost (Pedro mix)
Nightmares On Wx – 70’s 80’s (RJD2 mix)
Sixtoo – untitled
Brian Bennett & Alan Hawkshaw – Name of the Game
McKay – Rising Tide
Cliff Martinez – First Sleep
Cliff Martinez – Wear Your Seat Belts

This is the third part recorded for the show I put up last week. A very Mo Wax-centric mix this time round with five of the tracks being from the label or previously signed to it. Attica Blues had moved on by this time and were signed to Columbia which was sadly the last we’d hear of them with the Test. Don’t Test album that this is taken from. The first part of Nigo’s Japanese exclusive ’Symphony No. 250910 – Escape From Planet of the Apes’ is up next which was from the Ape Sounds LP and literally sampled huge chunks of the POTA soundtrack over heavy beats. Around the same time the album was released in the UK but without this track, possibly for legal reasons.

DJ Shadow’s ‘Dark Days’ soundtrack was out on 7” and his excellent David McCallum-sampling theme was exactly what was needed by an audience fiending for more after the uneven UNKLE album. The Cinematic Orchestra rearranged Krust’s erm… ‘Re-Arrange’ which was probably from their remix album collection as I can’t find it in his discography and contains the same spoken word sample that PC used on his ‘The Sky At Night’ on Kaleidoscope the same year. Nigo Pt.2 is next – this part was remixed and became known as ‘March of the General’ on copies of the album outside of Japan, a highlight in the late period MW catalogue. I seem to remember Jadell did production on this at some stage with the Scratch Perverts, top work.

We end with Shadow’s ‘Giving Up The Ghost’, at that point unreleased but taken here from a mix James Lavelle had done from an acetate. You can hear the quality isn’t great but also it’s very fast compared to the version on The Private Press, but what a track, the follow up to Endtroducing gets a bad rep but for me its every bit as good. The mix is interspersed with various snippets of food-related spoken word, one from the How To Have a Dinner Party album and two from a Warner Bros. comp with skits related to eating vinyl and the quality of the plastic.

Tracklist:
Attica Blues – The Man
Nigo – Symphony No. 250910 (pt 1)
DJ Shadow – Dark Days (Spoken For mix)
Krust – Re-Arrange (Cinematic Orchestra mix)
Nigo – Symphony No. 250910 (pt 2)
DJ Shadow – Giving Up The Ghost

A two-in-one offering today as we kick off the year proper with a blend of robot-themed tracks from late 2000. This sowed the seed for my Remember The Future mix seven years later, constructed from records about robots. Jon More fave and Solid Steel spoken classic ‘Music For Robots’ kicks things off then into the Electro The Robot version of MBM’s ‘Original Control’ with samples from an actual robot built by the Westinghouse Electric Corp in the late 30’s.
Kraftwerk should need no introduction and then we have an oddity from a soundtrack by Milton & Anne DeLugg called Gulliver’s Travels Beyond The Moon. ‘Rise, Robots, Rise’ is a stomping brass affair that gives way to an always funky Rufus Thomas dance number, ‘The Funky Robot’.

After that mix of mechanics it’s back to business as usual with the reissued-on-7”-at-the-time ‘Brutus Drums’ by Eddie Warner and a precursor to the first Now, Listen mix in the form of Sabu Martinez’s ‘Hotel Alyssa’. I think this had been bootlegged at the time and the early 00’s were a ripe era for all sorts of ‘unofficial reissues’ popping up in shops no doubt making a few people a bit of cash in return. Much like the web at that point it was still the Wild West and huge shops like HMV regularly carried bootlegs with no questions asked. Freeform Arkestra was always a great tune to play out with that plucked bass sample and building tension. Some chancer called DJ Food follows and then into an evergreen classic from the box, Camping Gaz & Digi Random’s ‘Circus World’. Around this time I found five mint copies of this in the bargain box in Soul Jazz Records (now Sounds of the Universe) for a pound and proceeded to give them away to anyone who would take them. The combination of Circus clowns, ska, screaming children and theremin solo has never been bettered or even attempted by anyone else.

The covers above and below were from a (very short) period where I was going to make a custom cover for each mix, around the year 2000 when I think I got a decent inkjet printer for the first time and could print glossy colour images. This lasted for approximately three Solid Steel mixes but I did make others for one-off themed sets like the Kraftwerk Kovers and the interview shows.

Into part 2 of the original show with Robert Klein’s hilarious ‘Record Offer’ of every record ever recorded, “we drive a truck to your house!”. Klein has several 70’s comedy records that are worth tracking down as he covers the usual topics of sex and drugs in a manic style. A Ninja classic from Up, Bustle & Out into Coke Escvedo’s ‘Runaway’ leads into ‘Funkyacidstuff’ from Luke Vibert via a 12” of archive material on Planet Mu, the same one where the track ‘Analord’ gave the Aphex series its name.
Photek’s name has been coming back up a lot recently it seems and ‘Terminus’ was possibly the last track he made that caught my attention before he fell off the radar. A B side on one of the Virgin releases, this huge downtempo monster just tramples over everything else in size and scope, proper widescreen break beats with bouncing bass, distorted drums and synth stabs. The Prodigy were occasionally mining this vein too and another B side, ‘Molotov Bitch’ follows with its ‘Ants Invasion’ sampling melody line. Klute plays us out with ‘Kahno’ from a 12” release on the Certificate 18 label. More spoken word crops up that would later be used on Now, Listen too, this was from an airline travel record about the Far East I think although the name escapes me.

There’s a part 3 saved for next week…

Part 1
Forrest J. Ackerman – Music For Robots
Meat Beat Manifesto – Original Control (Electro The Robot)
Kraftwerk – The Robots
Milton & Anne DeLugg – RIse, Robots, Rise
Rufus Thomas – The Funky Robot
Eddie Warner – Brutus Drums
Sabu Martinez – Hotel Alyssa
Freeform Arkestra – Freeform Theme (Raw Deal mix)
DJ Food – Rubber Samba
Camping Gaz & Digi Random – Circus World

Part 2
Robert Klein – Record Offer
Up, Bustle & Out – Aqui No Mas
Coke Escvedo – Runaway
Luke Vibert – Funkyacidstuff
Photek – Terminus
The Prodigy – Motolov Bitch
Klute – Kahno