Warp 10+2 Classics
The British label Warp calls these tracks classics, and in one sense of the word it's tough for Americans to know if that's right: damn few of us remember sharing our first kiss while Forgemaster's "Track with No Name" blared on the car radio or dancing cheek too cheek with a prom date while the cover band played Tuff Little Unit's "Join the Future." But in another sense, there's no doubt these 18 tracks are timeless originals. The 7 to 10 years that have elapsed since each of them came out (an eon in the fast-changing world of techno) have done no damage to the music. Dated, yes--you wouldn't mistake these tunes for anything anyone's putting together in 1999 (not counting those cheeky nostalgia buffs who are trying to recreate the sound of '89)--but damaged, no. There's an innocence to these tunes, a naive belief that those thin drum timbres and unadorned breakbeats are enough to keep a dance-floor crowd happy. The blippy analog textures of LFO's "Probe" or Sweet Exorcist's "Testone" are pretty thin, too, and it's tough to imagine how trippy they must have sounded back in the day. But trippy they were: not a few of today's innovators were inspired by what they heard here, and the fact that our ears are now too jaded to make it out lends this collection an undeniable poignancy. Where most techno wants to transport you into the future, these tracks lull you back into a just-passed golden age.--Jeff Salamon