VARIOUS ARTISTS
Check The Water: Selections From The Leaf Label’s First Ten Years
BAY50CD
The Leaf Label 2005
29 Tracks. 143mins17secs

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Very few labels deserve a comprehensive retrospective like Leaf. Celebrating ten years of forays into experimental music, from electronica to post-rock. A former press officer for independent label 4AD, which incidentally celebrates its 25th anniversary at the same time, Tony Morley, originally set up The Leaf Label to release Boymerang’s debut EP. Released at only one thousand copies, the Boymerang EP was followed by the first in a series of critically acclaimed Invisible Soundtracks EP and album compilations mapping out the spirit of the label. Although dance and electronic music represent an important part of the label’s catalogue, Morley was always keen on providing an outlet for experimental musicians, whatever their chosen approach. Releases by the likes of A Small Good Thing, 310, Murcof, Boom Bip and Doseone, Caribou, Eardrum, Rob Ellis, Icarus, A Hawk And A Hacksaw or Triosk have all contributed to The Leaf Label being at once extremely eclectic and utterly excellent.

Check The Water offers a chronological panoramic view of the Leaf catalogue, from an edit version of epic Boymerang’s The Don, featured on the very first Leaf release, to Volcano!’s Apple Or A Gun, taken from the band’s current Beautiful Seizure album, and Sutekh’s Alma Hueco, a previously unreleased track taken from his as yet untitled forthcoming album for the label. Everybody, from Susumu Yokota, Richard Thomas, A Small Good Things and Caribou to Murcof, Colleen, Shadow Traffic or Efterklang gets an input on here, highlighting the incredible diversity of their respective work. Split in two parts, CD one covering the first six years, including a reminder that the first solo outing from Kieran Hebden, as Four Tet, was published on the label’s Invisible Soundtracks Vol. 3, with CD two focussing on the last four years, this compilation is the perfect entry point for those who haven’t yet experienced the label’s vision, and a superb summary of some of the most important music of the last ten years for fans.

There are a few absent gems here, none more sorely missed than the mind-blowing Asa-Chung & Junray who, with just one album and two EPs, provided the label with some of its very best and most compelling material. Yet, the twenty-nine tracks on offer here, covering well over two hours of music, offer at once great quality and diversity, and show one of the most consistent labels around at its very best.

4.5/5

VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Electric Institute
REGLP118
ART / New Religion 2005
16 Tracks. 74mins29secs

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Whether it is under one of his countless aliases or through the releases of his Applied Rhythmic Technology imprint in the early to mid-nineties, Kirk Degiorgio has found himself at the heart of the UK electronic music scene for the last fifteen years. Beside his own work, released as As One, Future/Past, Offworld and many more incarnations, he has been a key activist with ART, releasing music by the likes of Balil, B12, Richard D James, Carl Craig and a handful more. Although the label has been dormant for years, Degiorgio focusing primarily on his own work, this new compilation, featuring some new and unreleased material, is a stark reminder of ART’s contribution to the electronic movement.

Released in conjunction with New Religion, The Electric Institute collates sixteen tracks by Balil, Domu, Degiorgio, under his As One, Beetlejuice and Blue Binary banners and as himself, Carl Craig’s 69, Neuropolitique, plus ART new comer Dutch producer Jochem Peteri, AKA NewWorldAquarium, who has previously released music on Peacefrog, Delsin and Carl Craig’s Planet E. Although the main inspiration of these tracks can be traced down to Detroit techno, a ground familiar to Degiorgio, the range of styles here ensures this compilation at once consistent and full of substance. With tracks such as Glass Dual, which opens the album, the first new Balil composition in over ten years, Beetlejuice’s Whatever Happened To The Cosmic Kid?, the first release from Degiorgio’s new project with Dan Keeling, and Stacey Pullen’s blissful Liquid Letter to previously unreleased gems such as the Derrick May remix of Neuropolitique’s Artemis or 69’s Puntang, The Electric Institute finds its roots in ART’s seminal Philosophy Of Sound And Machine (1992), released in collaboration with Rephlex, or Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series and is likely to more than satisfy amateurs of old school techno.

4.1/5

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Mercury Scales: A Boltfish Recordings Compilation
BOLT019
Boltfish Recordings 2005
13 Tracks. 65mins19secs

VARIOUS ARTISTS
SubVaritrax
SUBV002
SubVariant Recordings 2005
17 Tracks. 79mins40secs

Boltfish Recordings is an Internet label which has been rather active in the last couple of years, with releases from founding member Cheju, Mint, Zainetica, J. Auer, October Man and many more. Mercury Scales, the second compilation released by the label, follows last year’s excellent Region Zero, with contributions from all of the above plus Boc Scadet, Polestar, Richard Houghten The Rumblist and Line Noise to name but a few.

London-based Boltfish Recordings is one of a handful of labels to mostly focus on warm melodic electronica, alongside Toytronic, Rednetic or Lacemilk. Founded at the beginning of 2004 by long term friends and part time collaborators Will ‘Cheju’ Bolton and Murray ‘Mint’ Fisher, the label has since released an impressive nineteen MP3 EPs, with two more scheduled before the end of the year. All releases are available to download from the site, initially for free, then to buy. Mercury Scales is also being released as a limited edition professional CD. The album contains thirteen tracks of lush electronica. The mood remains very constant pretty much all the way through the course of this record, with each contributor appearing to offer a variation on a theme. The tracks featured here are firmly rooted somewhere between early Warp and Boards Of Canada nostalgia, tinted with Detroit techno, drum’n’bass or dub.

The album opens with Croatian artist Malaya and Two Faces, a beautifully crafted piece of electronic music with evocative soundscapes, subtle textural layers wrapped around a discreet melody. The following contributions, So Far and Celadon, from Cheju and Boc Scadet respectively, are typically impeccable. Both progressing along a similar template are slow moving and melancholic. Built around radically different soundscapes, it is interesting to see how both artists manage to recreate similar effects and arrive at a common point. Elsewhere, the tone is a bit sharper, with the like of Zainetica, Richard Houghten or J. Auer exploring more angular sound structures, while The Numblist or Mescalineaden appear to occupy here some kind middle ground, absorbing elements from both sides to generate their own sonic space.

SubVariant Recordings, the label set up by Quantazelle’s Liz McLean-Knight, might only have released a couple of titles, yet this debut compilation showcases a very similar tone. Featuring tracks from Marshall Watson, Quantazelle, Matthew Mercer, Popkan, Ochre, Zainetica or Quench to name but a few. From the outset, the tone is given by the delicate soundscapes and tempered moods of Phylum Sinter’s Monastic Phase, Marshall Watson’s grizzly Fall Without Change and Quantazelle’s exquisite Late Blazing Kinch Theme, but later on, this is tinted with more deconstructed moments, especially on Derek Michael’s Similak Jiggles or ediT’s Spare Spork, which both use digital processing to tip the original peaceful template over and offer some level of perversion. Elsewhere, Frederique Garvin, Matthew Mercer or Derek Michael revisit classic Detroit techno, each building on just a few characteristic elements of the genre, while Zainetica, Quench or Ochre each provide complex yet accessible moments.

Mercury Scales and SubVaritrax offer perfect entry points not only to the respective labels, but to a increasingly confident musical scene, which has been developing alongside more established electronic artists and labels.

Mercury Scales 3.7/5 SubVaritrax 3.3/5