We Are Back!!

Happy New Year! It's time for the first selection of the year and while I have no new release to report, I do a re-issue that I am pretty psyched about. It's LFO's debut album from 1991 (yikes!), Frequencies, which came out late in 2011. Rereleased on Warp Records, this takes us back in time to when techno felt like a new genre, when terms like "Acid House" and "Dance Music" were pretty concrete terms.

Sheffield's techno duo of Mark Bell and Gez Varley have only released only two records and not many more singles while they worked together, the pair's apparently meager contribution would hardly seem to bear out the claim that they were one of British techno's most important, agenda-setting groups. Nonetheless, early singles have indelibly marked British techno with Detroit's progressiveness, electro's funk, and an unflinching, uniquely British experimentalism.

Taking their name from the foundational component of the synthesizers -- the low frequency oscillator (kind of like calling a rock group "Power Chord") -- the pair were approached by Warp in the late '80s after tapes the pair had put together on some junky, second-hand equipment caught the ears of local DJs and the dancefloors of local clubs. Both Bell and Varley admit to roots in the early- and mid-'80s hip-hop and electro invasions, as well as the more obvious British acid house explosion, and their affectation for thick, electronic breaks, vocoder samples, and sparse, modal melodies derived largely from that source. (LFO were also one of only a few -- with 808 State and Coldcut -- to find domestic reissue through the New York-based hip-hop label Tommy Boy, making obvious a connection between British experimental techno and American hip-hop and electro-funk.)

Releasing their bass-heavy debut in 1991 to universal acclaim, the pair were silent for the next five years, with rumors of a follow-up surfacing from time to time failing to produce anything. LFO finally resurfaced in 1995 with the ironically titled "Tied Up," followed several months later by Advance. The group also remixed tracks for Björk and the Sabres of Paradise, but dissolved the partnership soon after. Varley went on to a solo career, while Bell began an intermittent production career, working on tracks for Björk's Homogenic LP of 1997 and Depeche Mode's Exciter from 2001. After resolving what Warp called his mid-range crisis, Bell returned with the third LFO full-length, Sheath, in the fall of 2003 (officially, it was the first without Varley).

So take a listen to "We Are Back", an apt selection for both the resurgence of this classic album and for the first blog of the New Year! Get your headphones on, this jam is bassy!!!



Buy your copy of LFO Frequencies here.