Label
Atlantik Wall 001-006
- Lost Tracks for Lost Minds is the first release on Dutch electro label Bunker’s new imprint Atlantik Wall. The Atlantikwall, for the uninitiated, was a system of coastal bunkers built by the Germans on the Western coast of Europe during World War II to defend against the advancing British and US troops. Lost minds, then, and wartime bunkers gives you a pretty good indication of what's to come, as Lost Tracks… contains some of the most belligerent, evil and sadistic tracks you'll hear this year. It's a (re)release of I-F's work from 1992-1997 and is the kind of savage acid techno that belongs in Europe's most rancid clubs like Elektrowerks in London, downstairs in the old Tresor or the bowels of the meanest, most mindless Solvenian rave.
It's also epic. There are 21 tracks on six records, lasting more than three hours, with a decent number of them spilling over ten minutes. It's in the vein of Acid Planet, Hott and Reference Records, but that alone doesn't do justice to I-F's talent for knob tweaking and precision control over his sound that's on a par with Etienne de Crecy on Super Discount 2. I-F has different approaches which all achieve the same numbing, hypnotic effect, be it the straight thudding beat, fast break beat, aggressive snares or destablising acid wibbling. Special mention, however, goes out the first track on the second side (track names? not here) where I-F appears to weald a swarm of angry fireflies for a full 16 minutes.
This isn't the kind of music you can listen to whilst pondering, making dinner, ironing or serving a meal to other people (in the interests of journalist endeavour, I did try), it's for zoning out into an otherworldly place where the beats are hard and 16 bars seem to go on forever. Anybody wanting the lip-gloss sheen of I-F's Italo classic 'Space Invaders are Smoking Grass' should look away now: this very very wrong music being done very very well indeed.
TracklistATLANTIKWALL 001
A1 Untitled
A2 Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled
ATLANTIKWALL 002
A Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled
ATLANTIKWALL 003
A1 Untitled
A2 Untitled
B Untitled
ATLANTIKWALL 004
A Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled
ATLANTIKWALL 005
A1 Untitled
A2 Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled
ATLANTIKWALL 006
A1 Untitled
A2 Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled