DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Blame – 360° Clic / Overhead Projections

1996

It’s time for another batch of blog reviews on Good Looking Records and time for the next five releases. It’s crazy how quickly we seem to be going through the label. I always felt that with the weight and presence of the tunes on GLR, that they deserved more than a day of appreciation. The problem there, would mean never progressing through the tunes in my lifetime. I am putting each one of these Good Looking Records into my blog, which I’ve been posting at the bottom of my posts, so if you’ve missed any, they’re all on there in one place. I’ll be eventually adding other labels bit by bit too.

We had plenty of accolade and honorable mentions with this guy, during his own 720° Recordings and his work on Cookin’ and Earth, all within the Good Looking circle. It’s always a pleasure and privilege to review his work, and luckily we have a lot more to go through after today. He is, Mr. Conrad Shafie. Blame. 

   1996 was a busy year of releases for Blame, having already marked his territory within the Moving Shadow and Section 5 (as artist Kay 9) labels during the early to mid 90s. For today’s release, we get a piece of music that reset the way the 4/4 style of music needn’t have to be adhered too, reflecting a jazz propulsion of ripe and nectar laced temptation with an overhaul on the atmospheric layout.

   Side A is ‘360° Clic’. From its live bass and cymbal tapping opening and snare infused beat, the keyboard hits the off beats and we swing into the to and fro of icy momentum, gliding along like the law of friction has been eradicated. I can hear MC Conrad in my head when this one plays (as there is a vocal version out there that we’ll get to). Blame was turning everything he touched to gold at this time and no wonder he was venturing  on the GLR tours with Bukem and his elite team. It was definitely on the strength of his releases that Bukem handed the opportunity of his own side label within the Good Looking Organization. 

    For the flip side of this, we have a tune that for me sits in the top 3 Blame tracks in his vast catalogue of treasures. It was on Kiss FM in July of 1996 that I was recording one of Bukem’s shows onto my cassette, where I first heard this next track, ‘Overhead Projections’. Now, if like me you were close enough to pick up Kiss FM on the radio but had the occasional static crackling while Henry Kelly on Classic FM was trying to fight the airwaves with them, then you’ll know that when this tune came on, I wasn’t sure if the interference was on the tune or my radio signal. Luckily, I managed to get a fair bit of recording done, after a few repositions of the aerial, which only led to my quest to buy everything he ever played. For all the futuristic mechanisms and sounds of distant machines computing these new sounds, it was Blame who unraveled this unopened world of mysticism, igniting this living and breathing universe within the Good Looking camp. The way ‘Overhead Projections’ burrows into your mind is quite simply a work of beauty. The future is still destined to be met with this nourishing snapshot of worlds beyond time. 

   Public Art were still designing the main release sleeves for Good Looking. I just seem to have a smattering of promos around this era though. Thank goodness I got the Promo outer sleeves for each of them when I was at Record Basement. Just missing a few inlays. 

    More GLR coming up as we work through this torrent of killer music. 

Big up Blame, more from him in the near future.