Rob Da Bank presents Sci Fi Lo Fi Vol. 3

Tuesday, April 14 2009

Last week I went out and picked up the latest installment of Soma Records' 'Sci Fi Lo Fi' mix series and very little else has occupied time in my car stereo since.

For those unfamiliar with Soma, they are a 15+ year-old, Glasgow-based techno and house label owned and operated by the DJ duo/production team Slam. For years now they've been well ahead of the curve, pressing up fine dancefloor releases from across the globe and generally adhering to a very high standard of quality with their releases from one year to the next.

Several years back Soma launched a DJ mix series called 'Sci Fi Hi Fi' in which they invite artists from both the inside of their label camp (Alex Smoke, Slam, Funk D'Void) and the outside (Ewan Pearson, Luciano) to create diverse and artistic mixes that span a huge variety of club music styles and aesthetics. The 'Sci Fi Hi Fi' series hasn't produced a dud yet and the mixes from Alex Smoke and Ewan Pearson in particular have proven to endure and remain fantastic listens from start to finish years after their initial release.

So, when in 2008 Soma decided to launch a counterpart mix series called 'Sci Fi Lo Fi' I was naturally intrigued to hear the results and see what it was all about. It turned out to be significantly better than I would have imagined.

The idea behind 'Sci Fi Lo Fi' seems to be a look into the more rock-oriented inclinations of DJ's and artists commonly associated with electronic music. The first installment of the series was helmed by Andrew Weatherall, a seemingly perfect choice for the inaugural edition being that he already had a reputation of being a punk and rockabilly enthusiast since pretty much day one of his epic career (this is a guy that plays punk sets at Fabric). The mix was a real winner and was full of all kinds of odball, left-of-center American punk selections from the past. It promised real good things to come from the series.

A second installment of the series mixed by Damian Lazarus seemed to come and go with little fanfare or recognition and for good reason... Not that there's really anything wrong with the Lazarus installment per se; it just seemed to completely miss the target with regard to goals and ideas behind the series.

However, it was only a matter of months before Soma came firing back with a brand new 'Sci Fi Lo Fi' mix; perhaps released quickly in order to make up for the second mix's aesthetic shortcomings and to re-commit the series to its initial themes and ideas. This new mix, produced and selected by Radio One's Rob Da Bank has been compiled as a sort of sampler of shoegaze tunes spanning from 1985 to 2009 and for the most part, it doesn't so much hit the mark as completely obliterate it.

Being something of a shoegaze adorer myself, there was little on this compilation that I wasn't already at least in part familiar with. In particular, the selections from Jesus & Mary Chain, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins and a few others are songs that I've been familiar with for ages and have listened to countless times. That in no way has diminished their greatness though and generally speaking, I find the music of labels like 4AD and Creation to be some of my very fondest records that I've known in my life. This is stuff that has no forseeable expiration date and remains as listenable today as it was 20 years ago.

This compilation could never really function for me personally as an introduction to shoegaze but for the uninitiated, this could easily act as primer in the curriculum for 'Shoegaze 101'. With only one glaringly omitted act (My Bloody Valentine) missing from the set, the mix provides a near-complete starter's snapshot of the many different aesthetics associated with the sound. It includes a few undeniably essential classics in the genre's history ("Just Like Honey", "When The Sun Hits", "Nowhere"), it includes selections made by international acts that demonstrate how the mostly British musical movement made its way around the globe (Dinosaur Jr., Ulrich Schnauss, etc.) and even shows where the next generation of shoegaze acts (M83, Maps, etc.) has taken the sound in recent years. All things considered, it's a pretty damn wicked collection from front to back and was arranged to be highly listenable in one sitting. It comes with my personal, utmost endorsement for whatever that's worth.

Additionally, the cd comes with an in-depth briefing on the history of the movement written by Steve Sutherland, editorial director of NME and Uncut (and this is exactly why cd's - or any kind of physical format - are still worth buying from time to time). It's a fascinating story told by someone who was there to witness the whole thing come to life in person and it's lovingly told, with a nostalgia about it that couldn't be faked. It also provided what is surely my favorite description of the sound that I've ever read, saying that the "whole darn mess was a throbbing thing of annihilated beauty"... Truer words are seldom spoken.

As I had mentioned before, I highly recommend the mix to both shoegaze newbies and veterans alike, it's an extremely well thought-out and assembled document of a musical movement that spawned some of the past 30 years most memorable music. Kudos to Rob Da Bank for the inspired selection and to Soma for another great entry in their mix series. Here's to more great things to come...

Tags: Shoegaze, Assorted Musical Musings

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