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2LP
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SND 3SE
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travelog was the third EP released by Mat Steel and Mark Fell as SND, arriving in 1999 just before the release of their influential debut album Makesnd Cassette on the Mille Plateaux label. Of the three EP reissues in the series, travelog contains the most developed and satisfying work from the pair, edging their reduced production palette into more fully-realized dimensions, coloring-in those instantly-recognizable bass notes and isolated percussive elements with a slow, sublime trickle of melody. The six extra tracks included are indispensable -- extending the original EP into an hour of mesmerizing, slowly immersive rhythmic pulses that still sound pretty much unlike anything you'll have heard before -- a perfect bridge between house, techno and UKG re-imagined within a stripped structure that should act as a masterclass for a new school of producers trying to balance out rhythmic complexity with space. The opening A1 encapsulates this asymmetry brilliantly, bare swing and shuffle riding chiming chords that add warmth and space to an already intoxicating blueprint, while A3 takes those same elements and sharpens them into a slow, undulating alignment bolstered by that immaculate mastering treatment from Rashad Becker. B3 takes things deeper -- a slow percussive edit slowly drowned-out by a growling analog drone, while the closing side joins the dots between this EP series and that trio of albums for Mille Plateaux that would soon establish SND as the most forward-thinking and still resolutely original producers from an otherwise largely-forgotten musical era.
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2LP
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SND 2SE
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Mark Fell and Mat Steel's second EP as SND arrived a year after their debut Tplay (SND 1SE) and continued to explore a distinct, highly individual take on electronic minimalism, house and UK garage stripped to its bare bones. The tracks here more or less split themselves into three distinct categories: the first detailing the brilliant swing and shuffle of their reduced UKG mutations, with "22" in particular perfecting the balance between academic reduction and kinetic, feminine motion. The second outlines a more linear approach utilizing reduced house and techno templates, while the last includes more experimental works such as the proper fwwwwd bass-pulse arrangements on the previously unheard B2 and the frequency fxxckery of closing track D3. With the original DAT tapes remastered and cut by Rashad Becker, this series is a real treat to followers of SND and Mark Fell, and an essential eye-opener for anyone unfamiliar with this incredible early material.
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2LP
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SND 1SE
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Mark Fell and Mat Steel formed SND in Sheffield in 1998. Tplay was their first self-released EP, produced in a limited run and housed in a sleeve adorned with nothing but a stamped phone number on the back. SND's palette and minimalist aesthetic more or less fell in line with the emergent school of producers that would eventually find themselves as labelmates on the Mille Plateaux label and the monolithic Raster Noton (Ikeda, Pan Sonic, Alva Noto, Bretschneider) -- but as opposed to the intricacies and overly-academic strictures that would occupy so many of their contemporaries over the following decade, in hindsight it's easy to identify how SND uniquely managed to re-code the swing and shuffle of UK garage and two-step within a new minimalist paradigm. Although producers such as G-Man, Sterac, Jeff Mills and Robert Hood had been stripping bare techno templates since the early '90s, it wasn't until later in the decade that the dots were joined between movements in techno and experimental electronic music. This was mostly a serious and contemplative movement, typified by the fetishisation of abstract forms on the one hand, and rigid, teutonic movement on the other. But with the release of Tplay SND had created a sound that was unlike anything else made at the time. Although they were guided by minimalist principles, their productions were also driven by the momentum of a much more colorful type of urban music. Simply put -- there was no one else bridging gaps between the austere functions of European electronic music and London's emergent two-step sound. Truth is -- if you bought Ryoji Ikeda albums you were unlikely to have thought much of Artful Dodger -- and yet SND made music that drew influence and parallels from both. Listening over 15 years later, it's startling just how fresh and forward these productions sound, now bolstered by over 30 minutes of previously unheard recordings taken from the same sessions. At a time when some corners of club music are arguably more accepting of strange and challenging production styles than ever before, it's incredible just how unique and inimitable SND's sound still is, taking us full circle to current producers like Visionist, Mumdance and Rabit, who look to challenge dancefloor conventions by using the same principle of reduction and innovation without neglecting the dance. Fully remastered from DAT tapes by Rashad Becker at D&M.
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