BASIC MOVES 09  -> PRE-ORDER : distribution at crevetterecords dot be


Spanky Rodgers – Running Through Time

“A True Story”

The summer of 1991 was on its last legs and to celebrate our high school graduation we had a mad plan. We left "head over heels" to the UK on an improvised road trip with only raving, having fun and doing crazy stuff on the agenda. The early September sun was beating down on the capital and to escape the weekday madness of the inner city we hopped on a random train to the seashore. 

Brighton was hot. A sea breeze blew me (in my romanticized memories) towards a record shop. I bought two tunes the guy in the store was playing and left, straight to the beach: it was going to be a wonderful day.  Summer came and went…The only things I took home from our adventure were: a massive sunburn and two records. One 12" by Luke Slater, and one mysterious beauty by a certain Aubrey/Solid Groove—unknown to me. The clunky, chunky, breaky and speedy weirdness of the tracks left me enchanted. Later, it turned out to have been my first encounter with the music of Allen Saei.

Years went by and playing, making, buying and selling records became my job. I emptied the bargain bins of the London and New York second-hand record stores on a regular basis and little known, mysterious releases on tiny labels such as Surreal, Alien Disco, Textures and (by then my favourite) Solid Groove started to form the backbone of my musical universe. 

These "salvaged records" from all over the world eventually inspired me to open my own record store in the spring of 1997. Starting a shop in Belgium, where even the dullest of little villages had a half decent vinyl outlet wasn't an obvious choice. Belgium was the Kingdom of electronic music and the local shops and distributors had an international reputation: if you wanted to get new import records you had to buy them from them, there was no way to get around the big players in those pre-internet days. When the new imports arrived mid-week, directly from all over the world, there was a ranking order. First, the big stores came in to pick their records, then the lesser Gods, and then at the tail-end, there was me: the new kid in town.  The first time, I faced a "plundered half-empty storage room" clearly depleted of everything a record store considered being interesting or sellable. I thought: "I am F*cked ...." But, ironically enough, what was left was exactly the unidentifiable stuff I was looking for. I filled a box full of little treasures and the best find of the lot was 10 white label copies of a 12" marked SPANKY RODGERS – Digit Fidgit. 

Allen Saei had crossed my path once again and all these little finds helped launch my shop under a clement sky. Very soon both known, and lesser-known DJs, as well as a bunch of party kids crowded the store looking for that techno/non-techno, house/non-house sound that we championed. Quickly, in its embryonic form, "Tech-House" invaded the second floor of Brussels’ main techno club, Fuse. 
 
When in March 2017 I was trying to put the ideas WALRUS had for his new label into words, it was Aubrey I had in mind when penning the phrase: "Just like true renegades, musical outsiders always walk alone, but time can become a weird ally". Over the last decade, digger types from all horizons have started to sift through the past again and have rediscovered these weird undefinable techno house tracks time had buried under a small layer of dust . Records, forgotten, unloved or just under the radar were being given a second chance and put under the spotlight, and Aubrey's work was amongst that.

This release forms a weird full cycle for me, upon hearing the tracks I felt myself "RACING THROUGH TIME" and it felt so good!

Sounds from the past, but always with one foot in the future... Spanky Rodgers, you nailed it once again! 

Your Fan,
Erge Stormen aka Geert Sermon 12/01/19

A. Spanky Rogers - Racing Through Time (Snippet)

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A. Spanky Rogers - Racing Through Time (Snippet)

Walrus (and his) Basic Moves