DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Blame – Between Worlds EP

1998

 More of the plentiful music you love, heading your way today. It’s never far from my side, although I’m sure that is pretty obvious to most. I had a 2 hour, 1992 rinse out yesterday morning. Just listening to tunes on 0 pitch and from the outer edge to the end. It flew by and really set me up right propa for the day, playing tracks on Labello Blanco, Reinforced, Basement, Suburban Base, Moving Shadow, Absolute 2, Jumpin’ & Pumpin’, Power Traxx, Formation, XL, a few white labels, and many many more. It was an extremely important year for me in terms of a fresh new world of raving, Ruth’s deeper seeking of more and more vinyl and becoming attached to the core of everything that set me up, forever more. 

   The voyage of magic moves on, only 6 years from those ‘92 days, but a million miles in musical terms, with today’s second disc in the ‘Between Worlds’ EP by Blame. 

    On Side C we have ‘Gravity Lock’, having gripped the far fetched satellites from their flotation and drawn on the temperatures that are radiating inside. Once again, the pages on this breath taking story, turn like the reversing of the waves, peeling off the sea shore. The pinched sky spits out its last precipitation of the past and as it lands, the seemingly solid ground absorbs the aftermath like a cloud absorbs the mountain tops. With this track we hit some of the most hypnotic and surreal altitudes of Blame and there is again, no question of the impact that Simon Odyssey Donahue has with these pieces, at the engineering desk. The 720 Degrees label was firing its boiler of intense killers around this time and you can hear so much of the sounds within ‘Gravity Lock’, that carried across to 720. Both artists had a spiritual connection in sound that we were so fortunate to experience. Even today, it sets a very unique podium up, that will always be loved. 

     For the last track on this EP, we have quite possibly, (highly likely in fact) one of my favorite Blame tracks of all time. While it may not be many people’s obvious choice, it casts out something that stuck with me forever. Track D, is ‘Between Worlds’, which I heard live at the time on a Bukem & Blame, Christmas Eve 1997 (well, very early Christmas morning) radio show on Kiss FM. It was the opening track of that show at around 2 or 3am and I must have been driving back from some event or party. All I know is that it was deadly quiet out, bloody cold, and this track came on. Whether it was the way it created this alternate reality, this living and breathing music which thrived on the desolate and baron world that slept around me, I do not know. It could not have gone on long enough and the journey felt like I was the only being in town. A Between Worlds state that felt was made for that exact moment in time. A time between the quiet and eerily suspended stillness and the forthcoming frantic lives of the festive Christmas Day. The mysteries and chills, mixed with the way the sounds transfixed me, to the molecules of each acutely placed sound in this fucking unbelievable piece of music. It isn’t just the visual and audio heights reached, there was a smell in the dark night and void starved air that found me and clutched that pre-morning potion of brandishing brain activity. I think the thing I became addicted to was the arrangement and style of the track. ‘Between Worlds’ was pretty much exactly how I felt listening to this. The easy swing style beats, velveteen bass and those synth pads..add in the work of a guy who had already worked so fittingly with the flute, with Blame, Gavin Tate, on ‘J-Walkin’’ and ‘Latitude’. 

   I sometimes wonder what my funeral track would be, but his is so very close to the perfect sound that I could ever wish to have. If it doesn’t come with me to my grave, at least play it to death when I’m gone. A monumental statue of musical perfection. It’s also a show well worth checking out as it does stretch the styles magnificently. 

   Blame, you are a music making god. Thank you! 

    My blog holds more Good Looking Records reviews, so I hope you get to check a few out! It’s been running since June 23rd this year of 2025, so plenty on there and a few more weeks to add more. The next EP is up, tomorrow.