Killer Moses

Slab frontman Stephen Dray put out some records under the name Killer Moses in 1995-96. As he tells it on the Unfit For Print blog (and I recommend you read the whole thing for the Slab history and to see the Slab resuscitation unfold):

Following SLab Paul [Jarvis] and I wrote a lot of stuff together largely based on the slab third album ( never released or even properly recorded but very diverse and way ahead of its time.... again!) At the same time I was writing with Sherman [a member of the last, unrecorded Slab lineup] who had basically single handedly got the NME to write about dance music and championed the Orb and Andrew Weatherall etc in his guise of Sherman at the Controls. He basically introduced electronic music to the NME audience. He was djing a lot and he and I wrote some tracks around 1990 one of which was released on Guerilla Records which was just about the leading dance label at the time. we chose the somewhat dubious name of Euphoria and the track was called Mercurial. It sold bucketloads and is on about 20 compilations....Anyway Euphoria sold and is still coming out on compilations... and me and Sherman got the princely sum of £150 each and a t shirt....After that I became Killer Moses and released 4 eps on Shermans own label called CLoak and Dagger. again it got lots of good press and reviews but the label went bust before an album came out. There are various Moses tracks on compilations... not sure how you categorise it really but the albumm was heroically dark.... a very narcotic Slab....

I would categorise it as instrumental dub/breakbeat, and "heroically dark" definitely fits; something like a cleaner Scorn or Ice. Offered here are three of the EPs:

Seizure EP (1995)

1. Insomniac
2. Drive In
3. Big Wheel

Unseen EP (1995)

1. Killer Moses
2. The Hanging Garden
3. Bogeyman

Succubus EP (1996)

1. Icarus
2. Sea of Fear

With tracks ranging from six-and-a-half to nearly twelve minutes, there's plenty to listen to. The A-sides are especially seductive: they gain intensity as they wear on, and you might find yourself headbanging without realizing you'd started. Get the vinyl rips here or here.

400 Blows - Pressure, Runaway/Breakdown

A recent visitor left some enthsiastic comments about 400 Blows, who are part of the Illuminated megamix album Heavy Duty Breaks, so I thought I'd offer up some more. 400 Blows may be best known today for "Black and White Mix Up" (a rather ridiculous remix with Mad Professor of "Groove Jumping") on Andrew Weatherall's exquisite Nine O'Clock Drop anthology of eclectic 80s dance music, but they left a pretty decent body of work beyond that. I have always thought of 400 Blows as the poor man's 23 Skidoo, following in their footsteps from dub to electro-soul and being almost but not quite as good. Which is still really good! 400 Blows' first album, If I Kissed Her I'd Have To Kill Her First, is already available on Rho-Xs (with great albums by A Certain Ratio, Rip Rig + Panic, This Heat, and more in the same post!), but I have a couple of 12-inch singles to supplement the album. The first is "Pressure" from 1984 (and the first LP), a mostly-instrumental song with a killer dub bassline presented in three versions plus the found track "Perspective 2". The second is from 1985, the electro-soul double-A-side of "Runaway" (a Rockwell cover, of all things!) with lead vocal by Cheryl Lucas, and the original "Breakdown" sung by Linda Duggan, in two versions each (remixed from the Look LP). That's eight tracks in all, packaged in a single zip file; get it here or here.

The Mothmen - Pay Attention

Here's an album I've been after for years: Pay Attention by the Mothmen, a 1981 album on On-U Sound (LP 002). This was actually posted on the "Are Friends Electric" blog some time ago, but it seems to have disappeared. Thankfully a helpful reader who had downloaded it noticed it on my wantlist and sent the files on to me, yippee! It's so good that it deserves more exposure, so I've re-upped it here (or here). The Mothmen have a more rock-oriented sound than any other Adrian Sherwood productions of the same era, and it turns out that's because Sherwood didn't produce them: he merely released the album on his label. The surprising bit is that a band with no influence from Sherwood would fit in so well on On-U Sound. A full history of the band is available here on the unofficial On-U Sound website. The short version is that the Mothmen were formed by ex-members of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias, the Durutti Column, and elsewhere; they recorded two albums and a handful of singles before breaking up; and two members went on to be the rhythm section of Simply Red. The whole Mothmen concept may have been a piss-take, but it holds up surprisingly well. The dub-inflected rock beats on Pay Attention never get too lazy, there are plenty of meandering psychedelic solos and flourishes, and even the fourteen-minute-long "The Mothman," which has the look and feel of album filler, at least has a driving beat that keeps it moving. A lost minor classic, in other words. Thanks again to the donor! Now if anyone has a rip of the second Mothmen album, One Black Dot, please get in touch (see my profile for my email address). Update: I've found One Black Dot and posted it here.