DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Rantoul – Changing Landscapes

2000

It’s our final day of 2025. I hope to continue with this journey along my shelves throughout the Mondays to Fridays, of the whole of next year. It’s another year further away from the musical moments that initially planted their sound into our lives, defying all odds, leaving the timeless residuals indelibly etched in our lives. 

    We are slowly reaching the end of the Good Looking Records reviews, only 12.5 EP’s to go and then a few weeks of final odds and sods to round off the label. I will be adding in the sub labels I’ve already reviewed on Facebook, and then we still have Looking Good and Nexus heading our way in the future.

   Today we continue with the Rantoul EP ‘Changing Landscapes’, which was Ian Rantoul’s only EP in the series. Ian was firing on all cylinders in the late 90s. Needless to say, I’m itching to get this next disc spinning. 

    ‘Deep Water’ sinks its teeth in straight away, on Side C, discharging a steady percussion roll out (with a great bit of Triangle tapping), stretching out the red carpet, on which the luscious pads unravel. The simple 4 note synth hook in here helps ground the hub for everything else around it. Waves of incurable radiance and internal simmering flood your being. Rantoul massages your brain and redesigns your muscle movements, flushing out the toxins of the unnecessary and inhaling a gust of the hybrid, future tech – cosmic syrup concoction. This track is just a sublime piece of music. One of my favorite of his, full stop.

    On Side D is ‘Last Stop’ taking a punching beat, extracted from a distant galaxy that leads the whirling, beeping and laser zapping fidgets into the fray. Here is another example of why I feel Rantoul would have been a great addition to Blame’s, 720 Degrees label. The vortex through which his music passed, held tales and fables destined for a time that stood way ahead. 

   Rantoul has been absent for a fair while, however we have some exciting prospects ahead, with news that Okbron have two tracks that didn’t make it onto Good Looking, in the pipeline for release on vinyl in 2026. Back in 1997, Rantoul made a track that only reached it onto dubplate, called ‘Borders’. Then we have Ascendant Grooves with the release that has haunted many of us Good Looking fanatics, AG 010 with his track ‘The Peasant’. What a double whammy right there, hey? Big up to Alex Guturov and Paul Bendell, who I know have been working on this becoming a reality, and I hear a few other treats hopefully soon. 

   Respects to you both! 

A very Happy New year to all.