Twenty four… that’s the number of titles unearthed on this compilation Rare SSR Electronica ’88-94dedicated to the proto-techno music of the Belgian label SSR – Sampler and Sans Reproche -.
The Brussels label Crammed Discs is renowned for its non-conformist signatures. Also, we are not surprised to find there the French ofAquaserge beside New Matter, joining the historical Telex, Tuxedomoon or Minimal Compact. In 1988, the founder Marc Hollander, assisted by Hanna Gorjaczkowska, lance SSR in order to reveal all these productions of which they are recipients or witnesses. Electronically oriented, the vinyl releases cover a whole range from new-beat to electro, announcing big-beat, ambient and techno. Listening to RARE SSR ELECTRONICA ’88-94, we are stunned by the quality of the titles, and a production that slaps with many samplers. The percussive rhythms are martial and groove at the same time. One detects a microporosity between the musicians coming from groups signed on Crammed Discs as Lord Solomon Pearbrook (aka Samy Birnbach of Minimal Compactalias DJ Morpheus), musicians from Nice singing and even Marc Hollander, himself under pseudonym, which are grafted to international artists sharing the same taste for risk and sound clash.
Among them, let us retain the trans-ambient premises of Bleep with its innovative The Launchpad (Boomerang Mix), the dazzling big-beat of Photon including remixes of Radiant or Alien illuminate Doin’ Our Thang, Anything You Like and its dark-acid on A1le groove hip-hop de YBU feat. Anneli Marian Drecker on Keep It Up, the incredible word-electro middle-eastern of Siamese with absorbed, or even announcing Daft Punk, Avalon and his abstract techno on Linked (Move D remix).
At the opening, the irresistible Hallucination Generation of The Gruesome Twosome summons the specters of New York electro, through the use of a rhythm machine Roland TR and by a flow that pickles. There are also the beginnings of madchester house pre-808 States, with Hans G to congas and italian piano on Geronimo, or Twin Freaks and their Agent Cooper Lurvs Coffee (Loglady Remix).
For its 42nd anniversary, the Belgian label offers an exciting retrospective, which announces others, and which will delight both purists and clubbers who like to get lost in the electronic abyss.
