Monday’s Long Song

One of this year’s best compilations is Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House And Breakbeat, 1990- 1994, a double album compiled by Richard Sen. The most well known name on the ten track album is Bandulu, whose 1992 track Amaranth- Love Lies Bleeding is on side one, but otherwise its mainly long lost acts and names from the world of ambient/ ambient techno, progressive house, tribal house and early trance-  obscure UK records. Centuras, Strontium 90, Orr- Some, Biff’ um Baff’um Boys, Epoch 90, Mind Over Rhythm, Dream Frequency, As One and UVX. The selection and sequencing is perfect , the album working not as a series of unconnected records but sounding like a whole, a document of a time that in lots of ways still sounds like the future. 

Tokyo by Centuras opens the album, a track originally from a 1994 EP Ascension, ten minutes of slowly building ambient techno, glassy synths and layers of spacey sounds, sci fi and futuristic, with drums finally not making an appearance until three minutes in and even then taking their time. 

Tokyo

When he was DJing out in the Czech Republic in the mid- 90s Richard discovered that in Czech his name Sen translated as Dream. The name of the compilation, Dream The Dream, is a loop in itself. The sleeve art features his long filed away photos from the KAOS weekender rave in 1990, the pictures having a dreamlike quality too.