DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Axis – One In Ten / Dusted

1996

Good Looking Records had been pushing and breaking the confines of music, since 1992 and now it was in a transition as a label, in regards to distribution of its records. Up until now, Vinyl Distribution, run out of Record Basement in Reading, had been the sole fountain of spreading the gospels of the label out to the world. This release today is labelled as primarily a Vital Distribution 12” although Charged (the dance side of Vital), are both credited on the release. 

   I remember being in 1996 in Record Basement, upstairs choosing tunes to take back to Dance Easy in Basingstoke and I could see through the glass window, Bukem was in Basement Phil’s office, and I often wonder if this meeting was the detaching of the Good Looking Records relationship with Vinyl Distribution. The new design of the promo, which came in the sleeve pictured, was a big graphic overhaul. The main release was designed by Public Art from Germany. The inlay sheet is included in the photos with the historic and predicted (G Force..we see you) details of new releases and upcoming releases on both GLR, LGR and Earth.  

  The 12” release today is by Illian Walker who began releasing tunes in 1993 under the name Confusion. He also produced under Ils and teamed up for a very successful run with Solo (from Production House). His first outing as Axis occurred with this move toward a fresh and eclectic jazz ensemble on the Good Looking label. Remember in my review on ‘Links’ by The Chameleon I mentioned that it was a release that set a new course of music? Well this release today was handed that raised, burning torch out for the next leg of the journey on this label. One thing that you’ll discover (or recall), is his ability to enhance the sounds within his work. Illian always took pride and precision to a new level with his work as we’ll reminisce on, today. 

    Side A is ‘One In Ten’ and for those that dedicate their ears and mind to those Bukem Essential mixes from 1995 & 1996, will immediately know this as the intro to the 1996 mix.

  The lightness and massaging relaxation you get with this tune, the distribution of feel good atoms bouncing through you and out to the world, is something which GLR were to harness more and more. The deep meditation and raw mechanics of the chillers corner from the early grandfather plates of unparalleled distinction of GLR, was now placing these new electrodes on a bubbling, jiving and shaking movement of assorted beats, world jazz pipette drops and a live dynamic within its composition. ‘One In Ten’ delivers a tune which may not have the ‘classic’ label associated as heavily as every other plate before hand, but you cannot deny that it continued a route which allowed this music to incorporate another way of infusing emotions on the atmospheric plain. 

   ‘Dusted’ springboards off the other side with more experimental sounds within the vortex of techy, jazz stabs and another serving of ludicrously polished live sounding beats. The bassline on this one is a real treat too, being heavy and busy. Ils made a big impact with this release and Bukem was scouting for new artists to take on the ever expanding shifts that the label was looking for. 

   One thing that also is apparent is the duration of the tracks on this release too. It threw out the structure of many of the previous releases and used a shorter format, which works perfectly for tracks like these two. It’s maybe not that important but it was a different approach from an artist we’d not had much music from. The boldness was continuing and the results kept coming for Good Looking, who were about to kick off a whole new label with Earth, just around the corner (see inlay sheet). Then the music was going to be more diverse than nearly any other drum and bass label, had ever been. 

   If you search Earth Records you can read the reviews I did on the seven volumes, some time back. I will be eventually transferring all my reviews across to my blog, but that’s another project, for another time. Until then, enjoy the reading and hopefully playing some of these tunes again and I’ll keep duplicating these GLR’s onto my blog too. 

  Next GLR up tomorrow.