Faceless Techno Bollocks...

...was an oft-heard charge levelled at techno producers. Up for consideration, two pretty obscure outfits and one slightly better known.

Parallax - Pressure of Speech

I caught Pressure of Speech supporting Orbital at Brixton Academy around 1994/1995. The main guy Mickey Mann worked in a psychiatric ward. Two albums and that was it. Both claustrophobic and talking of scary music (NIN vs. AFX), not always comfortable listening.

Love Under Water (Reprise) - Unmen

Two albums and that was it, too for Unmen. I came across them first on a Volume compilation (anyone else remember them?) with a great track that I put on many compilations. I dug up their albums this year, and some pretty good stuff too. Apparently, they were pretty broke and only ever had a borrowed sampler. That said what now costs £250 today, cost around £3000 back then... "cheap sampling technology killed electronic music, discuss".

Cut - Seefeel

Better known grace of having been signed briefly to Warp, originally on Too Pure (Stereolab had a few singles on TP). Seefeel were an essentially a shoe-gazing guitar band who crossed over, but played as a band rather than bedroom producers.

More klang than squelch with these tunes here, but will hunt down some good Acid soon.

Laters,

Thistle-Eye