There would be no EXHIBITION : RAW, at least not as we know it, without the spectral presence of DAVE MOTH, a name that threads itself, unassumingly yet insistently, throughout the architecture of BEN LOST’s award-winning compilation.

But, as with all hauntings, the origins are displaced, nonlinear. The beginning, if such a term can even be applied, goes back to 2020; a year already thick with collapse and strange opportunity. It was MOTH who introduced LOST to Archie - who together were operating under the brief, brutish banner of HARDBODY - with Archie simultaneously farming hard trance pastures that would soon go on to bloom under the alias CLAIRE’S ACCESSORIES. And for LOST, it was CA’s 2021 remix of Venus by FEDERATION that signalled a shift towards a tough, speed-drenched sound that circled back to what initially excited him about trance in the wild 1990s.

But DAVE MOTH was never simply a producer. He emerged from the art-damaged debris of the early 2000s, co-founder of THE FILTHIEST PEOPLE ALIVE alongside GAVIN IT, a project less musical act than acid-drenched détournement, somewhere between DIVINE and SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK. From there, Peterborough’s hardcore scene swallowed him whole, going on to tour Europe with the old school / communal HHH on lead guitar.

The early 2010s offered another shift / reconnection. MOTH reunited with LOST, alongside SOLARSTONE, joining aforementioned trance romo’s FEDERATION on guitar, just in time to cowrite and perform on their debut album F, a record saturated with the residue of rave utopias and post-punk entropy.

Parallel to this, MOTH straddled space / acid / hard rock projects in RIDDLES, MAGIC MOSS, and MARSHES - the latter fronted by LOST - before taking a 180 4/4 turn in 2024 to collaborate as SIDE WOUND, whose Leftfield and Lydon after a handful of mitzis debut Tremor Dollar (with Paul McGregor of ULTERIOR) sounded like a late capitalist death disco in an abandoned Meadowhall shopping centre.

Now, RACKET SPORTS (LOST194) marks DAVE MOTH’s solo debut on LOST LANGUAGE: full throttle, high-speed drama, foot to the floor at 154. Haunted wails under steel city kicks and warehouse clangs, channelling the gated spirit of REACTIVATE-era chaos. It’s the kind of gear LARRY THE LOBSTER might’ve smuggled up his CERVICAL GROOVE in a warehouse circa 1996.

FACTORIA, whose DARKSKYE remix was pitched up into the Gods by LOST on his latest EXHIBITION comp, returns with a technicolour remix that finds that sweet spot between peak-time euphoria and undercurrent tension - FSOE via AA Meeting, if you like. While Norwegian talent AFGANG, whose original RACKET SPORTS remix helped set the tone on EX: RAW, brings a club-ready dreamy donk twist alongside a darker, swampier ‘Forest Flip’ version.

Rounding off the package is another DAVE MOTH original CRYSTAL DAWN. A riff-heavy hard trance trip, filled with PSY-FI FX, unhinged fills, and dangerous / playful drops, a record that points backwards and forwards all at once, into rave’s unresolved future.

Mrak E Fischer (T-Punk 25)

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