I don't like picking one track as my favourite... I'm not good at picking a favourite album or artist either.

My standard answer is The Future Sound Of London - Papua New Guinea. although I'm afraid I've heard it so many times it might one day lose its lustre. It was the record that started to get me out of a teenage musical mindset. Before I'd heard it I'd wanted energy and euphoria from music, but it made me realise the importance of beauty and atmosphere and groove. It's a truly timeless sounding record - the production does not sound remotely dated despite being twenty years old and yet it doesn't sound "modern" either.

It's a wonderfully evocative piece of music - the summery and idyllic mood has been a perfect soundtrack to many, many hot summers in the countryside, some of the best times of my life. I've even heard people who've been to Papua New Guinea say it encapsulates the place perfectly. Yet the FSOL never went to the island. As their old website told it:

quote:

'this was a period of looking outward - we'd experienced relatively little - we tried not to be embarrassed by this - we'd never been to Papua New Guinea - in fact we'd both been hardly anywhere - some european jaunts - that was about it - at around this time we were getting a lot of sounds from the remarkably kind broadcast systems - in the mad competition for higher quality they were practically direct feeds - it suddenly occurred to us that we could go to Papua and collect dat recordings but in a way this was in itself now a tradition - a way of enhancing 'the story' - enhancing ourselves - making ourselves look worldly - providers of experience and anecdote - why not sit at home and save time - obviously this has a personal price-we missed out on the experience of life and people but at the same time we were just interested in the end result - and the end result had the flavour of Papua and no further relation - 'the sound of a syphilised scrotum is as beautiful as a bird in mid flight . . . .sometimes . . .'

The track ended up becoming a hyperreal artefact - they sampled a nature documentary about the island for sound effects, James Brown for tribal drumming and Dead Can Dance for native chanting. Technology allowed them to recreate a place they'd never been, in a way that was more perfect than the real thing ever could be. I think that's a brilliant subtext to the track, it sums up so much about postmodern culture but also about electronic music and why I love it.

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Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

Last edited by SYSTEM-J on Sep-08-2010 at 14:14