TIME MODEM Vinyl & CDs

Review: BOY Records reissue an early example of legit new beat robo-trance, Time Modem's 'Welcome To The 90s'. The German duo of Joachim and Ulrich Wilhelm first dropped this deathly cold, wan emotion-stripper under the ZYX Music subsidiary shortly following 'The Time Of The Gathering', their debut EP. 'Welcome To The 90s' proves it: most of the cultural collective mind who experienced the transition into the last decade of the Millennium knew ahead of time that this would be the decade that defined dance music. Just one look at the waveform of this future-gothic grinder - as thin as a too-savoured fishbone sucked dry - reflects the loss of affect that was to be expected of this new bionic-sonic era. We hear a faint robotic voice over the title track's tannoy, speaking on themes of deterioration, futility and renunciation; it glides above the track's unpassable early stab lines and end-stop stomps. 'Intensive Worlds', meanwhile, extends the Gregorian voxsynth to underlie a rather flat, detached description of a future Frankfurt street scene, narrated by a female interloper. A historic slab of wax, reproduced for a new age.

Review: Joachim Wilhelm and Ulrich Wilhelm recorded as a variety of aliases in the early 90s, from Deep Thought and Intact through to Time Modem. Their sound was typical of the Central European vibe, with a pronounced Belgian new beat slant to the music in those dark but playful synth lines and arch film samples. Originally released on BOY in 1990, The Time Of The Gathering is everything you want from a release in this era, teasing a kind of proto trance vibe without any of the fluff, just trippy synth lines and an unrelenting, throbbing pulse. It's all about the Highlander-sampling title track, but every tune on this much-needed reissue is gold, sounding beautifully buffed up for 21st Century mixing.