Guest Selector: Audiojack

Rich's picks:

"Being asked to put together your top tracks is quite daunting," says Rich Burkinshaw. "Processing 20 years of music through the jumbled up memories of a weed-addled brain gives me thousands of records but not so much power to recollect them all! But then tracks like these don’t take much thought. They’re etched into my DNA.

"I’ve chosen five well-known tracks that have had a big impact on my life over the last 20 years and stood the test of time to still be enjoyable for me today."

Nightcrawlers – Push the Feeling On

I can never remember whether the first record I ever bought on vinyl was Bucketheads' The Bomb or Nightcrawlers' Push the Feeling On. I might have bought them both on the same day. It was sometime in 1995, from HMV in Wakefield. I was 15 and only had one vinyl player atop a hi-fi system with tape, CD and radio. I had an older friend who DJed and I’d got a few rave tapes off him so I was beginning to get interested in DJing. They were on promo for 99p so it seemed too good an opportunity not to get my collection started!

It’s interesting that over 20 years later the masterminds behind these tracks are still heavily involved in the scene, Nightcrawlers becoming a worldwide hit thanks to the MK mixes whilst Bucketheads was produced by Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez, with a big remix from Armand Van Helden.

Aphex Twin – Windowlicker

My favourite and most watched music video of all time, I must have seen it like 200 times. This record got me really interested in sound manipulation and how far it’s possible to twist and cut up sounds. I love the weird eerie aesthetic. For me it’s a beautiful song. I’d sometimes play it to girls when I was younger and watch their reaction to see whether they might be accepting enough of weirdness to go out with me!

Jaydee – Plastic Dreams

Another record that seems like it’s been there my whole life. It was pumping out of mixtapes when I used to ride around in kitted-out cars as a teenager. I played it in mixes from when I first started mixing records through my late teens and 20s, then a few years ago we decided to remake it; a cover to celebrate 20 years of this amazing record. We couldn’t quite replicate one sound well enough and nearly threw in the towel, so as a last hope we asked Jaydee which instrument he used, and he very kindly sampled it and sent it over to us with his permission to use it. What a dude.

DJ Rolando – Jaguar

I’ve been coming to Ibiza every year for 20 years and for three years we’ve been lucky enough to call it our home. DJ Rolando’s Jaguar is synonymous with my Ibiza clubbing holidays at the end of the 90s / turn of the millennium, my early raving heyday. I’m not sure anything will compare to the feeling of hearing this in Amnesia or Space whilst 20 years old and sufficiently off my nut… Maybe Laurent Garnier's The Man With the Red Face, which could equally have filled this slot.

LCD Soundsystem – New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

To be honest I could have chosen any number of tracks to represent my favourite band of all time. All My Friends. Get Innocuous. I Can Change. Losing My Edge. The one about Daft Punk. James, Nancy and crew have always been one step ahead of the curve, and rarely more apparent than on this one considering the election between two of New York’s most sociopathic megalomaniacs. 'Your mild billionaire mayor's now convinced he's a king' was, I think, referring to former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, but could be equally applicable today…

Jamie's playlist: 

"I’ve done the same as Rich and picked five of the tracks that have stood the test of time since I was first introduced to electronic music in the early 90s. These tracks have certainly had an influence on our own music whether that be directly or subtly from the subconscious."

Gat Décor – Passion (Instrumental)

In 1994 I wasn’t quite old enough to get into house clubs so I used to watch Party Zone on MTV where they’d play back to back house music and when this track came on I used to fantasize about when I’d be able to hear it on a huge soundsystem in a club. As often happens they bootlegged it with a vocal from Degrees of Motion to take it into the more commercial arena, which is the version most people know, but the original cut is still pure class for me.

Orbital – Kein Trink Wasser

I was first introduced to Orbital by a friend in my home town who was a music buff and introduced me to most of the bands I got into at a young age like Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Portishead, Leftfield and so on. The first album I heard was Snivilisation which is still my favourite; it felt like it had been made by aliens, the sounds were so otherworldly and that concept still invigorates me to this day. Kein Trink Wasser is just pure feelgood vibes and my favourite on the LP.

Minilogue – Elephant's Parade

We used to hammer this track for a few years after we first picked it up in 2007 on Mathew Jonson and co’s Wagon Repair imprint. Minilogue are two guys who make their music in the middle of a forest whilst doing yoga and absorbing the surrounding nature, there’s a great short film you can watch called As Human As Possible. This title is apt for this track because although it’s a crazy twisted electronic piece which is clearly made on machines, over the 10-minute duration you can feel their souls through the music as they’re playing with the filters like jazz musicians. It’s the track of which I have the most production envy.

Phonique – The Red Dress (Tiefshwarz Remix)

This track hasn’t left our record box since we started out as Audiojack ten years ago and we played it again just this weekend. Once again we’re seduced by the otherworldly sounds that feel like what people on Mars would dance to. This was one of the tracks that was doing the rounds as Audiojack was conceived and music like this was the driving force in our desire to start creating weird electronic sounds. 

Cobblestone Jazz – Dump Truck

Mathew Jonson here again but this time at the controls. This track just reminds me of what I consider to be Circo Loco’s best era where minimal techno was at its peak, and we practically lived in DC10 when we were on the island. It’s almost 12 minutes of pure electronic funk and when the eerie horns come in I can still feel the huge fans blowing on my back and the sun rays coming through the ceiling.

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Audiojack play Sankeys, Manchester, Sat 26 Nov and The Tunnels, Aberdeen, Sat 10 Dec