Nick Höppner
Remixes

Another classic from the vault, this time with the deepnessvibes from the S-Man!

So, how long have you been waiting for this one to drop? The answer really depends on two things - whether you've just been waiting for new long form material from the UK IDM legends Autechre, or whether you've been waiting for Autechre to put a proper album together that stays true to the principles and format of a 'proper album', as this does.Either way let's just say Sign has been some time in the making, and it's definitely a case of payoff for patience. For the most part it's the waves of space age melody that really stand out, tracks like 'Esc Desc' seem to fill the room with bands of sci-fi harmony. Of course there's plenty of glitch and bleep here, too - the stepping 'Au14' is a case in point - alongside rumbling, bass-heavy business like 'Si100', where playful drips of percussion create a juxtaposition of innocence and menace.

YOSHThe Warning EPTime Is Now Germany

These tracks were recorded by Kevin Low and Fiona Carlin in Kevin’s bedroom in Gayfield Square, Edinburgh, in 1986. Me and my dad, Kevin, dug out a huge bunch of his tapes over the lockdown (about 80 of the them at first). Some were…better than others, however, the Gayfield Square demos were the pick of the lot. Previously Kevin and Fiona were part of the Post Punk / indie band ‘Wild Indians’, whose first release “Stolen Courage” had come out in 1983 – released on Flexi Disc via the Edinburgh fanzine Deadbeat. Throughout the mid-1980s they performed across Edinburgh’s clubs, including at the Hoochie Coochie Club (name checked on track 7), where they played alongside bands and close friends Pop Wallpaper and Visitors. The band went on to release two 12” singles, “Love of My Life” in 1984 and “Penniless” in 1986.After the band broke up Kevin sold his guitar amp and 7inch collection, Fiona her saxophone and they went out and got themselves a Yamaha RX-5 drum machine, Yamaha QX7 sequencer and a Yamaha DX-100. These bedroom tracks are the fruits of their first venture with this hardware, combining their experimentation with synthetic sounds (mostly the DX-100’s famous pre-sets) with a post-punk vocal style.These eight tracks are also, in part, the fruit of the “Enterprise Allowance scheme” - a policy venture of Margaret Thatcher’s UK government that gave unemployment claimants access to an extra £40 to top up the basic dole money. Following Thatcher’s election victories in 1979 and 1983, the policy sought to reduce the figures of mass unemployment which hung over Britain well into the 1980s. This policy, according to Kevin, helped to keep up the credit payments. He notes that, “when Fiona and I turned up at the DHSS office with the sure-fire money-making plan of making a business as a ‘song-writing’ duo they signed us up. However, I still think they thought we said, sign writing as they were filling out the form.”Kevin and Fiona stopped making music together shortly after these tracks were recorded so unfortunately, they never saw the light of day…until now!Fiona went on to work in Film and Television sound. Kevin became a photographer, working mostly in theatre. He is now an artist/painter working in Glasgow.