It's raining, man..

Once again the Future Vintage is in danger, this time because of the wrath of nature. Although I live in a beautiful place with baroque arches, it is situated damn near the bank of Vltava river which seems to be flooding the neighborhood as I write this. I'm not really worried to see the river at my doorstep but as I happen to be in the town in a state of emergency, I can expect electricity shutdowns and other troubles pretty soon. The last time the town was flooded, about 11 years ago (see above), it took a month to get it back on track, so today's batch can as well be the last post for a while. Ok, so much for meteorology, now let's go back to more pleasant things.

Some time ago I was having an interesting skype conversation with a lady friend of mine who used to be my girlfriend for a while back in the daze. The thing was, I gave her access to my files to serve herself to some old music. Some days later she wrote she couldn't really remember listening to any of the stuff, which of course gave me some surprise.

Well, yeah, I had to admit that maybe I'm just too focused on late 90s and perhaps I'm just too much into music styles appreciated by men, which also explains why the majority of Future Vintage readers seems to be male.

Remember the days when a good mixtape was the smoothest way to get some? Would I really play this music to my girfriend 20 years ago? Of course not. Who was I kidding? So I took a deep dive to come up with some true pearls to please our female companion. Perhaps your better halves will feel it the same way. May we be forgiven for our noisy hobby. Have fun and good luck!

Nicolette - Now Is Early (1992 Shut Up And Dance/1997 Studio !K7)

You probably know her as one of the Massive Attack vocalists, but back in the daze when we used to say rave instead of house party and vitamin E instead of ecstasy, Nicolette was a member of rave gang Shut Up & Dance and a voice of their early hits School Of The World and Single Minded People. The notorious couple PJ and Smiley of Shut Up & Dance also produced her solo debut Now Is Early, released on their own label. It was probably too early then, because the days had come for Nicolette after the Protection success. She was signed by Gilles Peterson and recorded Let No One Live Rent Free In Your Head for Talkin' Loud. Ironically, you can find the first version of No Government, the single that made her famous as a solo artist, here on Now Is Early. The album was remastered by Electrolux artist Chris Zippel and reissued with some bonus material by german label Studio !K7 in 1997.

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Shara Nelson - What Silence Knows (1993 Cooltempo)

She is notable for providing the vocals on the Massive Attack song Unfinished Sympathy, discogs says, but I think there's a whole lot more to this lady with a voice that reminds me of the best days of Shirley Bassey. That's why I decided to dedicate a FVV collection to her collaborations and guest appearences sometimes soon. Her debut album What Silence Knows has Motown roots and head in acid jazz clouds. The music was written by wide spectrum of musicians including Prince Be (of PM Dawn), Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs (of Saint Etienne), John Coxon (of Spiritualized and later Spring Heel Jack), Howie B. and Style Scott (of On-U Sound fame), and produced by Michael Peden, the head of Zomba Management, but anyhow.. it's mostly the voice.

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Drum Club - Everything Is Now (1993 Butterfly)

I remember waking up to that wake up, wake up, wake up phrase from Sound System because the girl I used to live with twenty years ago had never failed to put this CD in my stereo to play as an alarm clock in the morning. So when I got to listen to it again these days, I was surprised how good the album actually is. Charlie Hall and Lol Hammond (who is also responsible for the brilliant Damage album with Roger Eno) started on Guerilla Records in 1992 with floorfiller single Alchemy and soon were signed for Butterfly label of Big Life Records, a home of intelligent electronica back then. The line-up for Everything Is Now includes Steve Hillage, Emma Anderson from Lush and Kate Holmes, who is also known to Future Vintage readers as Scuba and was, by the way, a wife of Creation Records head honcho Alan McGhee. The booklet  includes pics by the late cult photographer Sally Harding. What else should I say about this album?

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