ASC - Sci-Files Volume Six

Covert Operations Recordings: 2008

While good ol' J' covered for my brain cramp on these singles, I did a little extra sleuthing on these Sci-Files. As Amazon doesn't have them available for listening purposes, I sought alternative streaming and purchasing options: Spotify, Soundcloud, and all that. Checking in with Bandcamp, I discovered ASC did in fact gather up the various Sci-Files EPs into a proper long-player, and made it available through his newer Auxiliary print! Unfortunately, it's still just a digital format, but if you want to experience these songs as an album rather than disjointed singles, there's no need to put that extra effort into making consolidated playlists anymore (sorry, Jack).

On the other hand, maybe these past four reviews of praise somehow left you with an indifferent shrug for the whole deal. So ASC makes some finely crafted atmospheric jungle – many producers have over the years too, plenty of which are still available for a quick listen all over the interstreams. With so much music and so little time, there’s just not enough minutes in the day to indulge yet another classy d’n’b collection if it’s still adhering to The Rules of the genre. Fair enough, which makes Volume Six of this series all the more important to ASC’s Sci-Files endeavour. You can mostly skip out the previous volumes if the prospect of ‘spacey atmospheric jungle from the late ‘00s’ doesn’t do it for you, but Volume Six, no way, guy. This is where Mr. Clements finally gave us a taste of future possibilities, in his music making abilities and the d’n’b scene as a whole. Why, you might say he achieved a sort of epiphany during his Sci-Files sessions! (oh God, I’m so sorry for that)

So, Epiphany, track number one of part six in a twelve track album-series. Remember that whole genre-not-genre microfunk thing I mentioned back in Volume Three and most of anything Autonomic related? Oh yeah, this cut is that sound to a tee, urgent rhythms and steady propellant bassline, but entirely dubbed-out and subdued in their execution. Even with the brisk pace, the percussion remains minimal and sparse, allowing the deep low-end plenty of space to ooze in all those sonic gaps. Meanwhile, wide-screen pads and dreamy synths breathe like cosmic embers, and damn skippy Epiphany’s getting my simile wank-fest on.

Taking us out of Sci-Files is Defiant To The End, another slice of sweet microfunk pie (the name will stick, trust me!). The rhythms are stripped even further than Epiphany, percussion and bass blanketed by droning ambience. Melody is barely present, an occasional ping of notes or crest of pad synth emerging before retreating back from our ears. It’s atmospheric music in the truest sense of the word, not just some fancy definition of a vibe.

And that wraps up this week’s look into ASC’s Sci-Files. Somehow, against the odds, this was kept interesting with so little music to work with (it was, right?). Hope y’all now understand why I don’t indulge singles too often.

ASC - Sci-Files Volume Five (Jack Moss Review)

Covert Operations Recordings: 2008

(note: why have one guest spot review when you can have two for twice the price, especially when the bill is a tidy zero dollars to begin with? You can read more reviews from Jack Moss on his blog, even if he hasn't updated in a while. How long's his hiatus been, a little over two years now? Huh, sounds familiar somehow...)


So, Sci-Files Volume 5, eh? Having played all my overlong intro cards in the previous review, how the Hell am I supposed to drag out a description of two tracks to another Sykonee-imposed word count? Even if they are two of the most gorgeous, evocative pieces of electronic music ever committed to, um, file?

Ah, the hell with it.

The Elements starts with the most unpromising sample on the whole damn series, a MOR guitar strum that immediately brings to mind memories of criminally tepid coffee table jazz ‘n bass from 1997. Are you sure you’ve locked the right coordinates into the navigation system, Captain Clements?

I think this incongruous sample is the reason The Elements is my least-remembered tune on the whole album-not-album (look, we’ve discussed this). Which makes it all the more joyous to be reminded that The Elements, once it gets past its distinctly unpromising first 70 seconds, is actually one of the best tracks of the lot. So many drum ‘n bass hacks out there would have looped those 70 seconds, thrown in a mournful trumpet sample and some third-hand soul diva vocal over the top, sat back and sparked up. But not ASC! Instead he mutates the coffee table into a sublime cyborg symphony of fluttering melodies, topped off with a delightfully suggestive vocal sample.

Blueprint doesn’t quite rewire the hackneyed so unexpectedly, but once again the intro, dextrous as those breaks may be, doesn’t even begin to hint at what’s to come. Within minutes Clements is layering galactic synth washes, bleeped-out melodic transmissions and electro-tinged robo-bass into something that’s dnb but also so much more.

Listening to these tracks with my critical faculties fully engaged and a desperate need to pad out word count looming over me, I can hear more than ever how ASC takes the tropes of atmospheric drum ‘n bass, which let’s face it was running distinctly short of ideas even in 2008, and splices them with the genes of ambient, IDM, film score and just sheer sci-fi sonic wizardry to push the boundaries of the genre into uncharted quadrants of deep space.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I don’t know what you’re thinking and that I’m just using a cheap rhetorical trick. But you’re also thinking that I’m over-hyping this shit, aren’t you? Well maybe I am. As a sci-fi sucker who originally fell in love with electronic music because it sounded like the future I wanted to live in, I’m definitely the target audience here. But if you like music that stirs the imagination, that paints pictures behind your eyelids, that forces adjective-strapped music-journos to wheel out the hoary old one about “the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist”, then don’t read another word of my blather and run instead to the nearest music-streaming service, cue this whole thing up start to finish and then tell me I’m over-hyping this shit.

Just don’t search for “The Sci-Fi Files”. Only an idiot would do that.

ASC - Sci-Files Volume Four (Jack Moss Review)

Covert Operations Recordings: 2008

(note: reading five reviews of ironclad word count detailing so little music grows boring, so spicing things up is a different voice, Jack Moss, my old writing partner at TranceCritic. He knows these EPs more intimately than I as it is. Also, check out his blog for more of his reviews, even if it's currently on hiatus)


When someone asks me what my favourite album is, I usually tell them it’s The Sci-Files by ASC. This is despite the fact:

1. The Sci-Files isn’t actually an album at all, but rather a series of EPs.
2. I don’t even actually own the series in its entirety.
3. I’d actually been erroneously calling it “The Sci-Fi Files” for years, right up ‘til Sykonee commissioned me to write this here review and used its proper name.

This isn’t out of sheer hipster point-scoring (“My favourite album? It doesn’t actually exist as an album”) but rather because The Sci-Files is an album in all but the trifling technicalities of how it was actually released. ASC originally wanted a lavish series of vinyl releases before the woes of his label Covert Operations forced him to abandon the plan and relegate his masterwork to a poxy series of MP3 releases. Imagine that gorgeous artwork in a series of themed 12” sleeves. You bet your ass I’d own the full series if that had happened, and I don’t even own a turntable. But it didn’t happen, and so I was free to collate the series on a Spotify playlist and play it through just like an album without ever having to pay for each individual track.

[Painful pseudo-intellectual amateur music-journo angle about playlists being the new albums sold separately.]

Anyway, the point is that The Sci-Files plays through like an album, and a fucking brilliant album at that, an album with a subtly varied but remarkably vivid and consistent mood, an album that explores the realms of pre-Autonomic experimental atmospheric ambient drum ‘n space as though that were an actual assured genre and not some nonsense adjectives I’ve just flung together. So to extract two tracks from the middle of this album-not-album and talk about them as an EP just feels hopelessly incomplete. Because how can you stop at just two tracks?

But stop there we must. So what have we got on Volume Four? There’s First Snow, which is actually one of the most conventional cuts out of the whole series. Despite its desolately inhospitable atmospherics and pleasingly over-dramatic percussive avalanches it’s not a million miles away from the kind of glistening frosty atmospheric jungle that, say, Alaska has been doing for decades. As far as desolate, inhospitable percussive avalanches go it’s still a blinding tune though.

Holosphere, on the other hand... This is the kind of tune that makes The Sci-Files so special. It’s drum ‘n bass alright, but not as we know it, Jim. The spacious, tech-y drum programming might just be some of James Clements’ finest rhythmic work and the bassline rends and tears at your subs like your head is being dragged through a wormhole. And the atmospherics, my God. ASC has a tendency of late to lapse into an over-explored seam of murky glitched dystopia, but Holosphere tickles your mind’s eye with visions of an uninhabited alien landscape, bleak but unimaginably beautiful.

Top shit, basically.

ASC - Sci-Files Volume Three

Covert Operations Recordings: 2008

Slight oversight on my part from the previous Sci-Files review. ASC's former home on Covert Operations Recordings was also a house that he built, so by all accounts the label would have been fully behind the project, had lack of funding not nixed plans for a vinyl run. What fun is theorizing if you knew everything though, eh? Plus, in some weird way, it'd be funny if Mr. Clements himself wasn't entirely satisfied with where Sci-Files was heading, his muse already wandering away from traditional forms of d'n'b in favour of trying out new things like dub techno, drone ambient, and whatever it is that he made for Autonomic (microfunk!). And it still doesn't excuse a limited run CD venture being unavailable. Kickstart that shit, mang!

Anyhow, here we are now with Volume Three of ASC’s Sci-Files series. Offworld Tides Part 2 is our opener with this two tracker, yet another slice of dreamy atmospheric d’n’b. It’s also a very apt title, imagery of seaside shores floating in your head as waves ebb and flow, though I’m still feeling the Balearic vibe over anything cosmic. Maybe aliens have their own Ibiza around Tau Ceti. Incidentally, the original Offworld Tides appeared way back in 2003, as an AA1 side on Inperspective Records. Geez, how many labels has ASC appeared on? No, don’t answer that, it was rhetorical.

The B-side of this digital collection, Firesign, is where things get interesting as far as the Sci-Files are concerned, marking the first instance of ASC forgoing the atmospheric jungle that marked the previous number of tracks. It’s relatively short, and much, much more chill and minimalist, with deep, dubby pads, yet maintaining the brisk, steady groove d’n’b adores making its calling card. Firesign is the sort of tune you’d expect as a transitional cut on an LP, but more importantly it’s something of a transitional track for ASC as a whole, a taste of the sort of music he’d begin exploring in subsequent years following Covert Operations’ folding. I wouldn’t call it an essential addition to your collection, as Mr. Clements has produced better offerings of this style elsewhere, but a noteworthy tune it does remain.

And with that, I must admit I've hit a wall in my coverage of Sci-Files. I’m struck dumb for additional information, and with three more to go, there's no way I'll keep these interesting by covering just two tracks per review. Why did Mr. Clements insist on having such classy cover art for these, forcing my hand in presenting each volume proper-like? I could blather nonsense between the analyses, but that would do them a total disservice. Methinks it’s about time to call in a favour for another guest review spot, and a sensible one for a change (sorry, Zangief). An individual who'd have no problem pinch-hitting a couple reviews, someone who knows these EPs inside and out. Hell, he was the one who turned me onto them in the first place (ASC in general, at that).

ASC - Sci-Files Volume Two

Covert Operations Recordings: 2008

Damn precedents. I never should have established them. Lack of foresight on my part perhaps, but I must have subconsciously looked forward to the challenge they presented too. I knew I had a few runs of CDs where coming up with consistent, interesting content would test my writing ability, even if it meant turning into a robot or calling in guest spots from street fighters to do so. In a pinch though, I could always count on every reviewer’s default crutch when struck dumb for an angle: detailing the music track-by-track, A full-length CD's worth easily eats up my self-imposed word count, hence why I typically only cover the essentials as necessary – makes for better reading to boot. With ASC's Sci-Files series, however, I'm offered no such recourse, each volume consisting of two tracks each, and no more. Son of a...

I understand the marketing behind something like this. A producer gets a concept swirling in their noggin, but wants to treat it with artistic care so fans and consumer can appreciate it more. Each successive single builds upon what came before, another chapter in the musical journey with unique cover art proudly displayed on record shelves like collectibles. Great for vinyl enthusiasts, but ASC’s Sci-Files never saw a run with the black crack format, instead relegated to the shrug-inducing realm of digital downloads and online streaming. Guess Mr. Clements’ old home on Covert Operations Recordings didn’t have enough faith in his concept, or simply lacked the funds for a proper hard-copy deal. What I want to know is why didn’t they at least provide a CD version consolidating everything? Surely a run of a few hundred wouldn’t be that costly – even ASC’s new pseudo-home with Silent Season offer that, and they’re way out in the middle of West Coast Canada nowhere!

Of course, I’m moaning for the lack of a Sci-Files CD more for my own benefit, as it’d make my hobby-job easier this week. But nay, I must do each of these EPs one-by-one, as is my rule with any series of CDs. Except Volume One, as I don’t have the first.

Since we’re dealing with ASC of the ‘00s, ol’ James is still in traditional d’n’b mode, and Volume Two opens with Datura, as fine an offering of the atmospheric sort as you’re likely to ever hear. Okay, not ever-ever – I can’t know how much some of y’all consume. Datura though, she hits all the key components I vibe on with this style: deep echoing pads, light floating melodies, vocal samples transmitting from the cosmos, and enough clever drum programming that things never fall into stale loops. Following it is Earthtones, touching on most of the same atmospheric points, but settling for a tone that’s more grounded than the spacey Datura. Definitely recommended for those in need of LTJ Bukem alternatives.

Off to a good start then. Only four more to go. Dear Lord, I pray I don’t succumb to anecdotes too soon.