The future ain't what it used to be

Once upon a time there was a blog called Future Vintage. Since its birth in the summer of 2009 it was spreading joy and good time among the numerous crowd of its readers... until it was crashed and smashed by an evil giant called Gugol. Even though Future Vintage did little or no harm to Gugol and his equally evil brethren, the sniffers, one sunny morning it was no more. The saddenned readers were looking here, there and everywhere, but all they have found was an empty screen where Future Vintage used to be. They went to ask Gugol but he claimed there never was such place as Future Vintage. Gugol was so evil that he had killed not only the blog, but attempted to erase any sign of its father, 70's Baby Early 80's Child.

Several weeks later the joy and good time returned - the Future Vintage was back again. Happy were the readers until they realized there was something different, something odd about this new blog. To trick and befool the vigilant and watchful Gugol, the Future Vintage was not as friendly and open as it used to be. Remembering how incredibly laborious was to raise from the dead, the reborn Future Vintage now had to choose new friends cautiously lest he let the sniffers in and let them wreak havoc again. Where there was wide open gate once, a tiny door was left for the readers to get inside. But that was not enough - every reader had to pass the test to prove his good will and commitment.

Not many of the 500.000 readers were willing or able to pass that test, but once they did, a whole new world opened in front of them. The new Future Vintage was now safer and better for that brave bunch. There were new posts showing up every couple of days, the links were appearing in their email miraculously and did not expire or vanish anymore. Since the sniffers were not able to find anything to report to Gugol, the blog was safe, and everyone was downloading and enjoying the music happily ever after. The end.

Yes, Future Vintage is finally back but it's not what it used to be. As you see, major changes have been made. The powers that be forced me to abandon the open house scheme and turn the Future Vintage into an exclusive club. For obvious reasons, there are no more links in the comments section. All you will find there is a documents that will give you answers to all your FAQs.

Read it carefully and consider the pluses and minuses of my offer. It's no secret to me that a massive majority of the original fan base were here just because there was free music up for grabs. But I firmly believe that at least 1% of you readers are not just takers, otherwise I wouldn't burn my precious time in attempt to put Future Vintage back on track. With you on my side, I'm sure the fairytale would eventually come true.

Today happens to be my birthday and the Future Vintage relaunch is the best present I could give myself. As a little push for you, here comes my special b-day offer: Every new BASIC member will get the REGULAR membership benefits. PLUS all BASIC memberships start with The Remix According To Peshay post. The offer is valid until September 30th.

Stay tuned!

The Remix According To Fila Brazillia (2013 Future Vintage Vaults)

There can hardly be a better artist to start a new era of Future Vintage than Fila Brazillia. Don't expect anything like those two classic smooth flowing collections released years ago. These 25 remixes by messrs Cobby and McSherry show that there's a stray dog underneath all that shiny fur. Surely there's a reason why some of these tracks were left behind, but listen to the Rhodes-fuelled home studio sessions, furious hip hop breaks, crazy sambadrome drumming, and you'll see there's gold to be found on this scrapheap. Some of the tracks, long forgotten or just slept-on, were truly surprising to me - different version of Sven Väth's Fusion, the Cornershop space funk disco and both Lypid mixes, to name a few. I wish I had those two remixes for The Twilight Singers to make this collection even more comprehensive. Sadly, this compilation is also a swan song for the Pork Recordings blog that is no more.

101 Ultramarine-Urf (Fila Brazillia Remix)
102 Snooze-The Chase (Revisited by Fila Brazillia)
103 Fluke-Josh (Remixed by Fila Brazillia)
104 Ruby-The Whole Is Equal To The Sum Of Its Parts (Fila Brazilia Remix)
105 Sneaker Pimps-6 Underground (In The Jungle Mix)
106 Busta Rhymes-Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check (Fila Mix 3)
107 Collapsed Lung-London Tonight (Fila Brazilla Mix)
108 Arakatuba-Josimar (Fila Brazillia Mix)
109 James-Tomorrow (File Brazillia Full On Vibe Mix)
110 Sneaker Pimps-6 Underground (Fila Brazillias Samba)
111 Black Uhuru-Boof n Baff n Biff (Fila Brazillia Remix #1)
112 Busta Rhymes-Do My Thing (Fila Brazillia Mix 1)
113 Lypid-The Sign's Alive (Fila Brazillia Dub Mix)

201 Sven Väth-Fusion (Fila Brazillia Remix I)
202 Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi-Maco (Fila Brazillia Remix)
203 Busta Rhymes-Do My Thing (Fila Brazillia Mix 2)
204 Snooze-Killer With A Gun (Revisited by Fila Brazillia)
205 Baaba Maal-Souka Nayo (I Will Follow You) (Fila Brazillia Mix)
206 Busta Rhymes-Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check (Fila Mix 4)
207 Mellow-Mellow (Fila Brazilia Mix #1)
208 Cornershop-Buttoned Down Disco (Fila Brazillia Disco Frisco Mix)
209 Lypid-The Sign's Alive (Fila Brazillia Vocal Mix)
210 Yoko Kanno-Forever Broke (File Brazillia Remix)
211 Busta Rhymes-Do My Thing (Fila Brazillia Mix 3)
212 Sneaker Pimps-6 Underground (Fila Brazillia Remix #1)

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Dead Labels Society launches today

Originally posted on June 28, 2013 

When I mentioned Dead Labels Society some two months ago, it was a figure of speech more than a real concept. But the number of your ideas and suggestions that followed, and also the relative success of Pork Recordings blog (expecting 100.000th reader any day now) convinced me to give it a try. Plus I'm no longer satisfied with dropping random albums and need a new challenge from time to time. So Dead Labels Society it is. I took a deep dive into the vaults and came back with material for about a dozen Dead Labels Society posts, ranging from ambient thru breakbeat and IDM to techno. Please don't expect labels like Moving Shadow (which would deserve a blog of its own though I'm pretty sure it would be swept away pretty soon) or labels that formed the sound of 1990s underground but are still active or relaunched, like Peacefrog or Hydrogen Dukebox. But I'm sure we can have a lot of fun while preserving music that wouldn't stand the test of commercial pressure otherwise.

Though my posting frequency was somewhat frozen by the time-consuming Dead Labels Society research, the many fans of Future Vintage Vaults series should not feel threatened by this new toy of mine. New FVV posts are ready and will appear regularly. Perhaps you may want to consider using the Donate button, every donation gives me a wake-up slap and points me in the right direction;)

Dead Labels Society: WIGWAM

The Wigwam label is a typical member of Dead Labels Society - a label that effectively ceased to exist. Though it had once been a home to such giants of 1990's German electronic scene as Wolfram Spyra and Bernd "Burnt" Friedmann, there's is such incredible lack of information around the net that some paranoic freaks could find it a strong foundation for a new conspiration theory. And as it would not be a good conspiration story without an invisible ink involved, listen to this - after I've failed to g**gle any useful info, I just thought no problem, all I need is to check those old fax sheets I used to keep with my promo copies. And guess what - what I found was just slips of yellow paper with some cryptic brownish spots.

So let's sum up all there is to know about Wigwam: founded circa 1993 in Nürnberg on ruins of the Toxikk Trakks techno label; management unknown, with strong ties to Kunsthochschule Kassel (the legendary art-school that stands behind Documenta, possibly the most exclusive new art exhibition that takes place in Kassel every 5 years).

The label's catalogue contains only 8 titles, two of which have number 7. WIGWAM01 was amongst the First 50 posts on Future Vintage and you can still find it here. Don't bother looking for WIGWAM 2, the legendary The Final Corporate Colonization Of The Unconscious by Drome. The album was licensed to Ninja Tune in 1994 and I'm not going to post it here; no thanks to the same begrudging bastards who are behind the recent takedown of all ntone posts. Unfortunately I was unable to find one of the WIGWAM 7's; The Second Trancemitter compilation just went MIA during the years. Also the WIGWAM05, the Lost Legion Sampler is missing because I only had it as a white label cassette, and I got rid of those years ago. If you have any of these, I encourage you to share with us and make the Advanced Contemplative Music label collection complete.

Drome - The Final Corporate Remix Of The Unconscious (1993 Wigwam)

Although the title of this 6-track minialbum refers to The Final Corporate Colonization Of The Unconscious, there are actually only two tracks remixed: a concise dub of Age Of Affordable Retina and far out ambient version of Nuzzling. Intensely percussive Hypo Bank with sweet fretless bass is an early version of Hypho Bannk from their third and last album Dromed, released in 1995. The rest of the tracks is very Drome - intelligent, complex and distinctive.

This is WIGWAM 2

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Nonplace Urban Field (1993 Wigwam)

Frankly I have no idea where Drome ends and Nonplace Urban Field starts. Both Burnt's projects share so many textures and samples, NUF being perhaps jazzier and even more twisted, that I can only think of commercial reasons. The eponymous debut album is built around five-part ambient opus Chilled, just close your eyes and this music really creates a mood of its own. Plus I love that pixel trash for a cover, ultra low resolution is a resolution too, right?

This is WIGWAM 4

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Ohmega Tribe - Anodyne Wisdohm (1995 Wigwam)

Not much info on Ohmega Tribe – they were Italians but that's just a wild guess based on their names and the fact that their only album Anodyne Wisdohm was originally released on the Alchemax Industries label in 1994. It was licensed to Wigwam and also to Silent Records for the US market a year later, which is quite an achievement for the notoriously poor Italian techno scene. BTW I just don't understand that Photoshop frenzy instead of a cover art, both Alchemax and Silent editions have respectble period graphic design. The album contains eight tracks of mellow techno ambient, imagine Model 500 on prozac. A lot of prozac, in fact. If you're fan of repetitive textures, dreamy pads and rather flat beats, and looking for a new musical wallpaper, this tribe is the right pick.

This is WIGWAM06

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Spyra - Homelistening Is Killing Clubs (1995 Wigwam)

The opening uptempo track ADSR from this debut album by Kunsthochschule Kassel alumnus Wolfram Spyra may sound little too formal, cold or distant compared to other Wigwam releases, but let the album play until the post-kraut ambient symphony Future Of The Past and it becomes apparent why Spyra's following works appeared on legendary labels like Manikin (a home of Berlin School) or the late Pete Namlook's Fax +49-69/450464. The female vocal on Ebb happens to speak my native language: "What interests me is magnets, the gravitation, their pairing, the weight, the vibration, the light, the velocity... No touch, no option, the velocity, the duration, the beginning..." I'm sure how much was lost in the original translation from German, but we call this babbling where I come from;)

This is WIGWAM07

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The Remix According To Peshay (2013 Future Vintage Vaults)

Originally posted on June 23, 2013

Paul Pesce AKA Peshay started his career just 20 years ago with a dub plate on the notorious Reinforced Records and continued to scatter his inches on many fancy drum'n'bass labels like Good Looking and Metalheadz throughout the 90's. Although he had signed with Mo'Wax in 1995, we had to wait for his debut album until 1999. Miles From Home was released on Island's short-lived label Blue just in time to become the year's drum'n'bass fav for me, followed closely by Weekend World by E-Z Rollers and Krust's Coded Language. Peshay's cool mixture of jazzy licks, unique atmospheres and complex heavyweight breakbeats shows in this Future Vintage Vaults collection of 19 remixes from the era we all love. Stay tuned!

101 Rob Dougan-Clubbed To Death (Peshay Remix)
102 Goldie-Inner City Life (Peshay Mix)
103 Ruby-Salt Water Fish (Peshay Remix)
104 LTJ Bukem-Music (Peshay Re-Work)
105 Goldie-Angel (Peshay Back From Narm Remix)
106 Ingrid Schroeder-Paint You Blue (Peshay After Hours Mix)
107 Galliano-Freefall (Peshay Vocal Mix)
108 A Forest Mighty Black-Tides (Peshay & Flytronix Mix)
109 Sugizo-Replicant Lucifer (Psychopathic Lucifer)

201 Jaydee-Plastic Dreams (Peshay Remix)
202 DJ Shadow-What Does Your Soul Look Like (Peshay Remix)
203 Ingrid Schroeder-Paint You Blue (Peshay's After Hours Instrumental Mix)
204 Courtney Pine-Tryin' Times (Peshay Remix)
205 Virginia Astley-Don't Break The Silence (Peshay Remix)
206 Photek-Rings Around Saturn (Peshay & Decoder Remix)
207 Revelations-In The Mood (Purify My Heart Mix By Peshay)
208 Pressure Rise-Bamboo Lounge (Peshay Remix)
209 Towa Tei-Butterfly (Peshay vs Flytronix Mix)
210 DJ Die-Autumn (Peshay Remix)

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