Shadowplay

Probably if you are reading this blog, you've already heard the news that the entire Moving Shadow back catalogue, or near enough, suddenly materialised on Spotify, Tidal, and other streamers! And as Matthew McKinnon notes in the comments, it's also digitally available in buyable form at Boomkat, Bleep et al.

Someone has helpfully put the whole lot of it into a chronological Spotify playlist 

I have been listening to it almost continuously since late last week and I've still only got to late 1995!

It's not completely complete - some very early stuff is missing, and as you go through on the Spotify playlist, tracks are sometimes listed but there's no audio -  withholding of right by some artists? logistical delays? 

Still, it's damn close to the entire discography. 

I have a feeling my will to continue right to the end (which is some point in the late 2000s) will crumble, as the liquid funk bongos-a-ripplin' direction dominates, while the counter-direction would be all that Dom & Roland type stuff.  (Update: 6/14 - got to somewhere near the end of '97 and the will to continue did in fact fade away).

But who knows? So far, I've turned up a fair few gems that I'd missed at the time. More on those below.

Update 6/14 - a nice trajectory through the discography steered by Rob Haigh himself. (Hat tip Matos)

Here's a few work-in-progress playlists of my own....

A YouTube list for the things not on Spotify / Tidal - as of yet mostly the earliest releases

Bliss-I- Missed-List (again this is being added to steadily as gems turn up even during the bongo-rippling days)  

Moving Shadow Single Artist Albums  (a massive bloc of listening, dominated by the prolific Omni Trio and E-Z Rollers - I honestly doubt I'll wade through this all the way to the end, but I do want to do right by Rob Haigh and the Rollers) 

Now to gems uncovered

In '94 I would have been paying very close attention to the output of Moving Shadow - checking the releases in the shops every week (most of that year I was back living in London). Plus they had me on the mailing list and a steady stream of promos were arriving to my door.  So imagine my surprise to come across a pair of releases that I never heard or heard of.... nor ever come across later in all my years of scouring record shops to scoop up old skool hardcore and jungle... those M&VE years of trading in CDs (brought over on the plane on my visits back to the homeland) for their exchange paper  currency and then immediately converting that to old vinyl. 

One of these Lost Gem releases involves an all-time fave producer too - DJ Trax

The common denominator in both releases is the excellent Dev Pandya (half of  Mixrace with DJ Trax), but here going as Brown.

Then there's someone called Rhymeside. 

The Brown & Rhymeside stuff is astonishing - like a demented drum solo. 

I can't imagine either of these track getting much play from deejays, it's way too haywire for dancers. But I never even heard these once on a pirate, where the deejays were freed up to be more adventurous selectors. 

The 12-inch by Trax & Brown is also clattery and battery but not quite as manic. Apparently  this never got a release, there were only a handful of test pressings. 

Ah, look, a version of it did come out the following year, on a label called Mob Handed

Actually, only the title has been kept - it's a different track!

Thatside track 

Call me sick in the head but I would like to hear Track 3, "Acknowledgements" - even if it's just them reciting a list of allies and enablers through an echo chamber. 

DJ Trax sometimes went as Dangerman  - and here is a track by Brown & Dangerman on Stronghold 

"Ideas for the Ear to Fear" - great title!

Now I could swear I reviewed something by Brown & Dangerman in my sporadic jungle 12 inch roundup column for Melody Maker's Stone Free section...  

Ah, I did, in February 1995 - this very record!

BROWN & DANGERMAN-- "Dreams of Another World" (Stronghold)
Superfast breaks surge through a whooshing wind-tunnel of aciiiiied frequency-modulations.

An earlier post on DJ Trax