DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Aquarius – Aquatic / The Dolphin Tune

1994

We venture forward into the next batch of remarkable pieces of music on Good Looking Records with a line up of artists that mix some of the big names we’ve already covered on the label, and a few that were making those early and significant ripples across the scene. 

We have a bumper crop to launch into and “time waits for no man…goodbye Reggie”…(Reggie Perrin inside joke there…”Thank you CJ” ha ha)

   Before you call the funny farm on me, we turn to the ninth release on GLR and the work of a guy we’ve mentioned on 3rd Eye, Basement, Certificate 18 and FFRR. You’ll be hearing plenty more too. Rupert Parkes went under his Aquarius name when producing work for the Good Looking / Looking Good labels and while he only had three releases to his Aquarius name (one collab with Tayla and two solo), the work that he gave us remains peak output from the studio king known more commonly as Photek. Today’s release (well, Side AA) is the top of the GLR pile for me, as it holds a time and place, a mindset and a technical brilliance which I find hard to better. That’s why it’s the only record I have two versions of, the original blue label and sleeve, and then the black & white labelled and sleeved promo. 

  Side A works with the essential addition of calming dolphin signals which during this period of UK rave and drum and bass music, carried the connotation of the mystics shrouding the movement. They were also featured in the intro to ‘Tear Into It’ which we featured last week and it seemed to portray that the calming, gliding and intelligence of this sea animal, gave listeners a sense of peace, expanse and undisturbed environments for us to seek. ‘The Dolphin Tune’ drops us in the pod of these fascinating creatures and we get the whistles, clicks and pulses to begin the aqua adventure. 

  In the scope of Rupert’s work, it’s probably toward the lower end of his output to be honest but considering the output he gave us in 1994, it still sits among some of the best there’s been. It did deliver the clearest amens and a finely polished tune but stack it against his works and there’s not that jolt of wonder you’d usually receive. If you heard it out nowadays though, it would sound fucking immense. Maybe it’s just nudged below par though, based on the strength and unbeatable piece of music on the flip side. 

   Side AA is ‘Aquatic’ and my personal number one favorite tune on Good Looking. If you were standing in the sweatbox of The Sanctuary, in Milton Keynes, on Friday July 1st, 1994 and you had Bukem ready to drop his ‘Pinch & The Punch’ set nestled between the wobbly pillars, you’ll understand what this tune may mean. Maybe I was in a perfect state of mind for the set that was to follow as Bukem and the lyrical poet, MC Conrad (RIP) began what was to be a set that gave me the clearest lenses for the music that came. The track he opened up with was ‘Aquatic’ and I sank into what must have been an attached personal vein, connecting me with the music and LTJ’s surgical precision and pin point ear for mixing. I’d been DJing enough to know what he was doing and I still couldn’t fucking tell when or how he was mixing. Of course his chopping was obvious but it was timed like nothing else I’d heard before. The journey became life for me. I needed every track and Bukem confirmed that he was the one that I needed to listen to, in order to understand the journey of a DJ set. Everything ‘Bukem’ would devour my love and quest to make DJing an art. Those sets of his still remain lessons in the art of DJing.

   The track ‘Aquatic’ contains Rupert’s mastery of beat productions, sustainable, echoing vocal techniques and then you have a piano that riffs a 6 key melody which melts you “ooo yeah….aa-ha” is lifted from the intro from Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’. This tune has a bassline that raises the bar with not just its purity, but its melody. It is an essential instrument here. The way this is put together will still astound you in its all round assembly and exquisite attention to detail. Parkes was basically on fire in 1994 and this for me is one of the top tier, full stop. His work here hit the line of summits he was exploring and there will never be a moment like this again. One to relive, rejoice and repeat until my dying breath. The very best there has been. 

    Music like ‘Aquatic’ does not happen anymore. There was a time and place and playing it just reminds me that I will never be transported by anything quite like this tune. Each play of it these days just makes me worship it all over again. Even my daughter is humming the Whitney Sample around the house. It fits every soul.