The new home for the mp3 blog formerly known as The White Noise Revisited. The tracks posted here are either available with the permission of the record label and/or artist, or from deleted or commercially unavailable releases. Failing this, if you are the copyright holder and want the track to be taken down, you only have to ask and I will oblige. Most downloads will be available for about a week, after which they will be deleted from the server.
Tusken Raiders - Sexy Sandpeople
If ever a record label was created with me in mind, it was Clear Records. Formed in London in 1995, Clear - named after the seminal proto-techno tune from Cybotron - peddled a quality line in funk-fuelled nu-school electro (but with nods to the old school), graffiti-influenced typography, a Star Wars obsession (initially) and vinyl pressed on gorgeous, clear wax. I played the two slabs of vinyl by Jedi Knights and Tusken Raiders to death - I even made a tape that was just those two twelves repeated until they filled an entire C90. There was nothing else out there that came close (with the honourable exception of the Antacid EP by Link on Warp, but that was the Jedi Knights in disguise).
The tracks on the Jedi Knights 12” ended up on their debut album, New School Science, an absolute stone cold space funk/nu-electro classic, but the Bantha Trax EP by Tusken Raiders (yet another alias for Mike “µ-ziq” Paradinas) is far less well-known and worthy of a re-appraisal. The prolific Paradinas was churning it out in the Nineties, but the EP on Clear represented a change in style for him, away from the complex breakbeats and melodic electronica of his early albums for Rephlex. The songs on Bantha Trax were a real mixture, centred on two funky eight-minute opuses - Tatooine Sunset and Sexy Sandpeople (posted above). Both tracks are percussive monsters - Tatooine Sunset is a relentless tribal bongo freak-out, while Sexy Sandpeople (posted above) is the bump’n’grind number from the Cantina on Mos Eisley, with a pummelling, ass-shakin’ groove and some jazzy Jake Slazenger-esque keys lobbed in towards the end. It’s only recently I’ve found out the specific track names - on the original 12 ” , one side was called Scream, the other Yowl - in honour of the noises uttered by the Tusken Raiders in the original Star Wars film perhaps.
Bantha Trax EP currently on eBay for a very reasonable £11.99.
Clear Records discography
Ninja Tune’s DJ Food pitched some ideas for the cover that didn’t end up getting used. You can see them here
Brilliant Clear Records mix on The Reconnect Show
