DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Blame – Firestorm EP

2001

It’s Friday and the week heads into its checkered flag day. The label still has a few more reviews to go, so more quality music on the way. We have the rest of the EP series to go through, some 12” artist works, the Studio X vinyl and then I’ll round off with the Points In Time CD’s (not the vinyl as i have them all on 12” single anyway), and then the Progression Session CD’s. I don’t even know what label is heading up after Good Looking. Ha ha! 

    The blog will probably stop after the Good Looking Records Label and then I might kick another one off on another label in the future. One thing I will be doing though, is adding the 720 Degrees (while under GLR), Ascendant Grooves, Blue, Cookin’, Deep Rooted, and then Diverse labels into the blog, so it contains more of the world of Good Looking Records. Then there’ll be Looking Good and Nexus to follow, in conjunction with these dailies. I’ll let you know when I add them.

    Today we spin the second plate on Blame’s ‘Firestorm’ EP from 2001. In 1968, the film ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ depicted a vision of the future, 33 years ahead with the mind of the machines controlling humankind. Well, it was a different kind of control that occurred during the sound displays from Conrad Blame. This was the art of a producer who we haven’t caught up with yet. The future is out there and we just creep a bit closer each time. You have to say that they’re a rare breed of artist that have made this leap ahead. 4 Hero, spring immediately to mind, but I’m sure you’ll drop some more in folks. The will of the experimenters and risk takers that dared go there, reaping the fruits that many fell flat with.

    Side C has Blame unraveling his midas touch with ‘Mechanism. 02’. If there’s a tune that places you in the heart of the gargantuan machine, then look no further. The way this slowly lights up the giant pistons, cogs, valves and hyper rolling drive belts, leads the listeners toward an immersion in steel, smoke, oil and a formula of furious sounds. Blame was channeling this lavish energy in ways that the cyber intelligence couldn’t cope with. He had such a fluid and hi-tech style, it stood out in its own unique way. Utterly blistering! Blame mentions, in making ‘Mechanism. 02’, :

“I remember Mechanism almost sent me insane. It was a month or so spent sampling little toy car and robot noises, and then somehow trying to figure out how to turn all that into a track!”

   Up next to round off the release, is ‘Lifeform’, on Side D. Here we catch tiny fragments of the echoes that hit our receptors. Blame dials up the future inhabitants that bear no resemblance to anything we can detect with our senses. The airlocks have clamped closed, the decompression chamber has extracted the oxygen and the hatch has drifted away from the cabin of sanity. Tubes flail, the lights blink erratic rhythms of multi functioning chaos. Nothing stands between the chemical matter of all we know and the eternal depths of a universe that remains incomprehensible. Blame takes the reformed illusions and places them on this 12” as only he can. 

    That’s it from Blame on Good Looking Records. A huge shout to Conrad for such incredible music.  One thing is for certain, you have no shortage of material across the labels on Good Looking from him, to hone in on whatever your mood or frame of mind. 

    We’ll be back next week with three different artists, two of which make their only venture into this series. You will not be disappointed. 

   Have a great weekend and keep drip feeding those musical vibrations! 

  My blog is rolling too, so go check it out. Thanks to everyone who takes a gander. Here it is if you want a peak. Respects!