Alien Community - Alien Community 2

Fax +49-69/450464: 1994

Looky-looky what I got! An honest to God, original print, ultra old-school, limited-run copy of a Fax+ CD! Not a rip, not a reissue, but an O.G. version with the classic cover-art. And with the Earth photo too, not triangular logo. Such releases were part of the 'PW' series, or 'Peter's Worldlabel', where all of his famed, globe-trotting collaborations took place. Not surprisingly, these are highly sought items, releases from the likes of Fires Of Ork, 2350 Broadway, and From Within fetching stupid amounts of money on the collector's market. Sometimes though, you get lucky on the Discogs Marketplace, and I scored myself a source that had all manner of classic Fax+ items up for offer. True, many of them were re-issues on Ambient World, but beggars can't be choosers, and I nabbed me some albums I never thought I'd land without dropping upwards of triple digits for.

One such release I always had my eye on was Namlook's pairing with Jonah Sharp as Alien Community. Their featured track in the Coldcut mix CD Tone Tales From Tomorrow Too made it among my earliest internet explorations (d'at title alone! ...not to mention the sci-fi electro), but discovering it was part of this ca-raaayy-zee catalogue of rare ambient techno, I resigned myself to wistful glances here and there. I mean, the project hadn't even been tapped for reissue with Ambient World. I guess the Spacetime Continuum tie-in just wasn't enough for consistent interest.

Even now, Alien Community doesn't rank terribly high on the list of Fax+ essentials. Well, the first album does, as there is some mighty tasty ambient electro going on there, but not their second (and last) outing under the alias. Why, one can find this for the same price of a regular CD on the used market. Strangely, the same goes for Pete and Jonah's other collaborative project, Wechselspannung, which I haven't really listened to. Its artwork is mighty familiar tho'...

Anyhow, as with many Fax+ releases of this era, Alien Community 2 features a singular sixty-minute composition titled A Long And Perilous Voyage, broken up into twelve parts around five minutes in length for handy CD skipping. Because not everyone is down for those super-noodly, feeling-out, abstract ambient segments these jam sessions often entailed. Seriously, it's like when guitarists spend time tuning their instruments, but instead with twiddly knobs on gear racks.

Also a common feature with these LP-length outings was how they were structured, with rising escalation of the various sounds in use, a mid-section of downtime with various sonic doodlings, each player doing their thing, then a bigger peak-out with everything coming to the fore. It's effective ambient techno jamming, especially if you enjoy Namlook's distinct synth pads and transistor tweeps with Sharp's spaced-out acid tweaks and electro rhythms. Still, it's just following upon the same ideas as the first album, and I can understand why some may feel it the lesser of the two Alien Community releases.

Spacetime Continuum - Double Fine Zone

Astralwerks: 1999

Forget all that ye' may think thy knoweth of Spacetime Continuum, for naught, it doth apply to Jonah Sharp's final album with said nomme de plume (um, yo'). This is a very different album from Sea Biscuit, is what I'm saying. Heck, it's also quite different from Emit Ecaps, though the Detroit techno pulse that dominated that album is still felt in Double Fine Zone. All that ambient techno and spacey chill-out and IDM explorations that marked much of his '90s output though, forget about it. For Mr. Sharp, he's discovered a sound that other techno producers had discovered, and wasn't afraid of having his stab at it as well. I am, of course, talking about all that jazz, man! Because if Carl Craig and Model 500 could go jazz, why not Spacetime Continuum?

Still, even in the annals of techno detours, this one comes quite out of leftfield. I can't say I've taken in all of Jonah Sharps musical output, but I see little indications in prior releases that he'd go this direction. Like, did Carl Craig plant some seeds of curiosity when he did those remixes for Kairo? Mixmaster Morris' foray into the realms of Ninja Tune inspiring his friend to attempt the same? Brian Iddenden just happened to be crashing on Jonah's couch and, having a saxophonist on hand, why not get some studio time out of him too? Whatever the case, going jazz is what Jonah wanted, so going jazz is what Jonah got'ed.

And he ain't pussy-footin' around it either, opening track The Ring featuring a prominent smooth jazz solo from Mr. Iddenden over chill, bloopy electro sounds. You can almost feel the warmth of cigarette smoke caress your cheek as you lounge outside a futuristic cafe. Follow-up Microjam gets back on that Carl Craig techno tip, but there's a fair amount of saxophone solos after. Rhodes keyboards too, if I'm being fair, and those are good fun for yours truly, but man, that saxophone... It's fine, I guess, but I've made clear it's an instrument that does weird, uncomfortable things to my ears, and ol' Brian's performances don't do much to alleviate that. A couple tracks here and there are fine, just not so much album's worth.

It's not just the Rhodes and saxophone contributions throwing this so firmly into nu-jazz territory. Sharp also makes use of sampled drums, giving many of his tracks that live-performance feel you'd expect out of, say, The Cinematic Orchestra. Seriously, did he make this in hopes of Ninja Tune noticing? It's almost a shock when you hear techno beats again in Double Fine Zone, even when coupled with the saxophone and Rhodes licks. Even more shocking to hear is Different Bend, a track that sounds like it could have been on an old school trance compilation. In the year 1999! Damn, what I wouldn't give to hear a ten-minute version of it, but Different Bend is one of the shortest tracks here. Such a tease.

Spacetime Continuum - Sea Biscuit

Astralwerks: 1994

It shouldn't have taken me this long to pick up Sea Biscuit. It never occurred to me that I could though. When I first heard Spacetime Continuum, it was as part of Coldcut's Tone Tales From Tomorrow Too, a mix CD that sounded so strange, so leftfield ...so alien to my virgin raver ears. I concluded the tracks within were so underground that I'd have no hope of ever finding them in my trips to the Vancouver shops, much less in my Canadian hinterland homestead.

Then along came a Lord by the name of Discogs, showing me the light – these tracks do exist beyond the unknowable realms of the deepest crates, some even care of familiar labels (that Namlook fella' was part of Alien Community? Go figure!). That didn't mean I could now rush out and buy 'em all up though, oh no! Tone Tales was more than a half-decade old by that point, ages where electronic music was concerned in those days. Surely items off there were long out of print and impossible to find for a college student on a minimal income just learning the wonders of Amazon shopping. Little did I know that one tune was always easily accessible, the Astralwerks label among the most prominent electronic music prints in North America. No ridiculous import fees, no inflated collector's market prices, no dodgy bootleg deals; just a nice, simple used-shop cost, plenty available no matter what your Amazon preference be. Yep, no reason to not get the Astralwerks version of Sea Biscuit if you want this album (from Astralwerks). No reason at all.

Jonah Sharp's debut album as Spacetime Continuum is oft hailed a classic of ambient techno, though I sometimes feel every ambient techno album released between 1991-1995 is hailed as such. It's definitely got a lot of things going for it that tickle my earbuds proper-like. Pressure, the tune that appeared on Tone Tales Too, is all retro-future sci-fi electro bliss. Subway gets in on that dubby ambient-bleep action that has my Higher Intelligence Agency triggers flaring (squee!). Ping Pong wouldn't sound out of place in a Mixmaster Morris set of the time. Q 11 isn't much removed from the sort of stuff FSOL were producing on their Lifeforms singles. Plus, we get a couple lengthy noodly ambient outings in Voice Of The Earth and A Low Frequency Inversion Field, which puts Sharp quite comfortably within the larger Fax+ canon. Can't be part of the Namlook legacy if you don't have at least one endless track of relaxing pads and minimalist sonic doodling.

So I like Sea Biscuit, but it's more for Sharp utilizing familiar tropes of dubby ambient techno than anything unique to his sound. Aside from Pressure, which hints towards his future leanings into techno-proper, there isn't much here that I couldn't find on other releases from that year. Still, if you're looking for another addition to such a collection, it remains an easy album to find on the used market.

Spacetime Continuum - Emit Ecaps

Astralwerks: 1996

The whole kerfuffle surrounding a dodgy re-issue of Jonah Sharp's Sea Biscuit did result in one positive: rekindling my interest in his old Spacetime Continuum project. I always assumed it was among those nigh-impossible to acquire discographies, released in ultra-limited fashion or on hopelessly obscure labels. Well, Sea Biscuit was on Fax +49-69/450464 (among other collaborative works with Namlook), and Mr. Sharp did have his own print, Reflective, which was about as underground as it got back-when (though the lads at Ninja Tune liked them). In any event, preconceived notions confirmed, amirite? Yeah, then I learned Jonah was also signed to Astralwerks, possibly one of America's longest, most respected electronic music promoters. They partnered with the almighty Virgin, fer' crise'sakes! How an ambient techno guy got signed to a label that promoted the likes of Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim blows my mind, but then Astralwerks did lean that way at their start too. Couldn't resist those almighty Virgin dolla's tho'!

And as Astralwerks was plenty profitable during the compact disc's glory years, there's plenty copies of Spacetime Continuum floating about, making gathering some vintage Jonah Sharp far easier than I'd ever have anticipated. I haven't gotten all the albums, mind you (that collaboration with Terence McKenna seems a little too out there for my interests), a couple mid-'90s items suiting me just fine. And as always, alphabetical stipulation starts us off with one of Mr. Sharp's lesser known works, his alias Emit Ecaps. No, wait, that's the name of the album, Emit Ecaps just a couple one-off tunes for compilations. What does 'emit ecaps' even mean? I keep thinking drugs.

As for the album, Emit Ecaps, you can definitely tell it sprung from the mid-'90s, when electronic music scenes were frequently cross-pollinating, yet it's rather timeless too. Opener Iform gets down with that funky electro business, but doesn't sound retro in the slightest. Follow-up Kairo starts off in ambient techno's lane, but somehow gradually morphs into jazzstep d'n'b before shifting onto an ambient dub path – Sharp sure makes good use of the twelve minutes dedicated to this track.

And the genre fusion doesn't let up. While electro, Detroit techno (of course) and dub tend to dominate Sharp's aesthetic, there are nuggets of other genres scattered throughout too. Out Here spends a significant chunk of its time being flighty, bleepy space ambient before dropping some solid techno thump for its final minute. Vertigo has some kind of jungle-breaks bleep ambient techno thing going for it (and is pretty darn dope while doing it). Pod pairs grumbly technobass with floaty electro melodies, perfect for cruising the Oceanus Procellarum Boulevard. Funkyar could almost be a tech-house track, if it didn't stutter-pause its rhythm so often.

Listening through Emit Ecaps, I realize it's perhaps a tad too 'IDM' for the sort of customer base Astralwerks had started cultivating in '96, which sadly caused it to slip through the cracks. There's no excuse overlooking this little electro gem these days though.