Speaking of unexpected delays, it's time for me to share some more from that charity compilation as I did nearly a month ago. To be fair it's not due to me being lazy or forgetful as usual, remember there are a good 250+ tracks here! I wanted to spend a bit of time with it and share some stuff I'd found on there that I liked rather than just reeling off the big names as I did last time.
So let's not waste any time and get stuck right in. At the risk of repeating myself, a big reason I got into picking up compilations like this is the bits and pieces you pick up that you'd never find otherwise. Enter Dirty Owl, yet another case of me liking something from a comp only to find they have only one or two releases to their name - not explicitly true in this case though as Alexander Ananyev has a couple other artist aliases that are more active, bit still. You're So Worth It gets right into things, with some plastic drums soon giving way to some gorgeous electro burbles. It's an interesting addition to the tracklist, one that fits in amongst the other IDM adjacent stuff for sure with a slight acidic edge to it too, though keeping it nice and melodic and never going too abrasive with it. Sort of the same school of sound as DMX Krew to an extent who coincidentally pops up on this compilation a couple of tracks later too!
Another throwback next with a bit from The Higher Intelligence Agency - a name that I have always found a bit pretentious, but even so I've liked a bunch of their works over the years. HIA always get lumped with the Artificial Intelligence stuff that Warp was putting out in the early 90's for me, not due to confusion with the name or anything but because the stuff they were making around the time was very much of that same 'electronic listening music' concept warp was playing with - most evident on the first album Colourform, but also when they contributed a bit to the second Artificial Intelligence compilation too in 1994. I'd assumed that sometime between then and now that the HIA would have stopped making stuff because that's usually how it goes, but they are still active today just as a solo act rather than a duo. So what's changed in the years between? Not a lot as it turns out, this track could easily have been released in the early 90's as-is and would have fit in just fine with the other output. That's not really a complaint from me in this case though - as has been well documented here that sound is one of my favourites and I will always welcome more of it, I could understand that turning some folk away though.
I don't mean to pick favourites or nothing, there's just a whole lot of IDM and ambient on this compilation, it's the circle Touched operate in after all. I've avoided any full on ambient ones as of yet, not for any real reason other than they break up the flow a little bit and I think they'd maybe be better suited in their own post. There are plenty that blur the lines between the two though - enter Mushrooms Season, yet another artist from this compilation with very few credits otherwise. It had me thinking it was another full on ambient one from the intro, but after a minute or so we start to get more layers introduced, starting with a hazy almost trip hop beat that gets stronger with time. Maybe it's just me having listened to a lot of them lately but once again I can't help but hear the streak of Silent Hill influence here, while not as raw as some of Akira Yamaoka's work I think there's definitely some similarity there, I'm at around the 4 minute mark as I type this and I think that's the strongest evidence for it. Overall though, the end result comes out sounding a lot like the slightly more obscure IDM stuff I've talked about in the past like Ochre's A Midsummer Nice Dream, which is a fine coincidence as Ochre is how I found out about this compilation in the first place back when.
And that'll do it for this entry, I don't know how many of these I'm gonna do but with 200+ tracks there's plenty to go at. I am going to try space them out just so it doesn't get too much too quick, especially if the tracks all dwell in similar space as the ones I've chosen today. I've not been disappointed with this compilation, it was fairly cheap all things considered and I've yet to hear a good half of the tunes I reckon, so expect more in due time!
And as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.
-CVF
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