Transmissions CD

Those who lived through the 1990s will happily tell you that few ambient and electronica outfits of the period could match the emotive, life-affirming majesty of Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton's Global Communication project. Transmissions, the pair's first retrospective of their work under the alias, offers plenty of supporting evidence for this view. It features painstakingly re-mastered - and, we will add, brilliant-sounding - versions of two full-length releases: 1993's Blood Music: Pentamerous Metamorphosis, a radical set of lengthy ambient "translations" of tracks by forgotten shoegaze outfit Chapterhouse, and their peerless debut album 76:14, which remains one of the greatest ambient sets of all time. Throw in a third CD featuring collected singles and remixes, and you have a thoroughly essential three-disc set.