Mike Huckaby
Too Many Classics

I would often wander into the forest after school. This wasn’t Sheffield, or Manchester, as much as I thought I wanted it to be. Sometimes the mushrooms we picked would make me sick, which added a vital sense of adventure to the days and weeks that could pass without much happening at all. Something to talk about, a story we made together. It was a dead city. Not great, not terrible. Nothing to break an illusion. We had no idea what we were doing, but a reality check was the last thing we were looking for. Wasted from the youth centre, we would go and listen to people spin records at Skandal. The melodies in The Cure songs lingered with me for days. I wanted to make my own music. I started to leave early and bang onmetal into a microphone. I saved up and bought a Casio FZ-1 sampler and drum machine. We poured ourselves into bands. We would stay in and practice, programming MIDI on an Atari ST-1024. Nobody would hear this music. My Korg MS-10 was stolen by an ex-band mate from our rehearsal basement. I would dive inside myself, burrowing a tunnel to a new world. Configuring an inner system. A fascination with Clock DVA became an obsession with techno. KLF. Future Sound of London. Themelancholy was still there, in traces, but it was moving somewhere, looking for company. Growing. Ecstatic. Ecstasy! I left the basement to share this with others. I moved to the big city and the music got faster. My process got faster. Collaborations. Plug-ins. That’ll do. Take it to the people! What used to be a personal practice became a public practice. A call and response. A communal effort. Abstract numbers heard this music. My technique sharpened. My studio served a function greater than my own; a system outside myself. Then I found the DAT tapes, and the VHS footage. They had traveled with me. Far from a nostalgic exercise, this was a reclamation of the original impulse. A reminder of the music I always wanted to make. Reorientingmyself with analog machines and obsolete formats, I stole hours to bring this work into the world. I hope that it speaks to you.

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression”Rovas presents Aleexe (Panea Records) with a solid four-tracker EP that provides a complete experience into this inspiring artist's intellect.My Shoulder is Your Shoulder”, kicks off this EP with a highly danceable and dense vibe. Deep synths evolve with snappy percusions and a bassline that leaves no doubt: this is going to be serious shit. “Teson” follows on the same side getting the table ready, with some breaky vibes and a resting bassline, mastered by cheeky vocals and playful synths.The B side seems to spread a brighter atmosphere designed for the daytime, delivering stripped back and sensual contrasting tracks. “Teapetesis” incorporates great melodies and rolling riffs that bring the energy flow up until the end. Lastly, “Comprehension” gives a closing with the perfect dreamy calmness.

Stunning bit of research by Andrea Dallera (Dualismo Sound) and Gabriele Casiraghi who've been meticulously digging Italian bins. After endless sifting through this crucial time in Italian dance floor music, we are presented with their final distillation of this transitory period between 80's afro cosmic and Italo's peak into early 90's rave and Italo house era. In their words: “The whole concept was born as we started to find records that were into a kind of hybrid zone that was clearly pre-announcing some of the huge musical changes brought by the 90’s. The sound at play can be understood as looking closely to Belgian New Beat, Uk's Acid House and German early Techno but still connected with some dynamics of the ‘80s sounds: lashing snares and catchy melodic phrases joined by filthy acid bass lines, highly compressed kicks and 'World music' samples are just some of the most recurring elements.”Hands down mandatory for any dance floor oriented record collection.