I'll Search The World Over

In 1999 Heavenly released the third in a series of DJ mix CDs Heavenly Presents Live At The Social, a double CD package with an Andrew Weatherall mix on disc 1 and Richard Fearless on disc 2. The previous two had been block rocking excursions, big beat and breakbeats courtesy of The Chemical Brothers on Volume 1 and a genre busting blur of reggae, hip hop and electronics by Jon Carter on Volume 2. 

Weatherall and Fearless offered up something a bit different. Now, be prepared for a shock but I'm about to commit a heresy. I've always preferred the Richard Fearless mix over the Andrew Weatherall one. Andrew's is very good, technically brilliant and seamlessly mixed, an eighty minute deep house set with some undeniably great tunes- Marshall Jefferson and Noosa Heads' Mushrooms (Salt City Orchestra Out There remix) for one and Ashley Beedle's remix of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Salvation for another- but for me it doesn't ever really catch fire in the way his 90s techno sets did or the scuzzy electro of the early 00s that come either side of it and the deep house he plays isn't as deep and dubby as the stuff he was playing at his Blood Sugar nights. There, I said it. 

Richard Fearless delivers though- a superb late 90s record box dive into electro and techno that totally captures the excitement of being in a small room with a great DJ playing records. He plays an Andrew remix (the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Primal Scream's Stuka) and some classic 90s techno tracks- Ron Trent, E- Dancer, Slam, Model 500. Fearless opens his set with this....

Eurotrash Girl

Chicks On Speed were a trio, three women from New York, Munich and Australia converging in 90s Berlin, a feminist art/ punk/ electro/ techno group who as much as anyone became known under the banner electroclash. Synth pop plus techno with a dash of post- modern punk. Their cover of Cracker's Eurotrash Girl was their second single, a fantastic slice of tongue in cheek, end of the century art/ pop. They have said that techno producers would always turn the vocals down so on Eurotrash Girl they placed the vocals front and centre- they also saw themselves to some extent as the Eurotrash Girls of the title. 'Well I've been up to Paris/ And I've slept in a park' the Chicks intone, 'I'll search the world over/ For my angel in black', over throbbing, minimal electronics.

And in the middle of his set, track eleven, Fearless mixes this track by Miami's Jackal & Hyde out of Model 500 and then a few minutes later into Slam, energising robotic techno funk...

Get Down To My Technique