Anyone could have made the same mistake. For the first thirty minutes of this album I genuinely thought that the Lyte Funky Ones had finally surmounted their less than unique brand of boy band funky hip hop with something rather exceptional. Then I realized I had the wrong band. This wasn’t the Lyte Funky Ones, this was Warp Records’ LFO: Lo Frequency Modulation, if you please – the boys who virtually reinvented techno in the early nineties with the sound of acid house. It was LFO who gave us the squelchy sounds. It was LFO who gave us the beeps. That they were once called “the Stone Roses of techno” is misleading. That they managed to gain posterity by pissing off Radio 1’s Steve Wright with first release ‘LFO’ is somehow not so. Afterall, what sounds ‘terrrible’ to Steve Wright may sound perfectly legit to anyone without a propensity for cracking appalling jokes and generally cheapening radio air time.
From the humble beginnings of The Warehouse in Leeds to the 130,000 plus sales of their first release and a number 12 placing in the UK Top 40, to working with members of Kraftwerk and taking production credits on everything from Björk’s Homogenic and Selma Songs and Depeche Mode’s Exciter, Mark Bell has pretty much earned his place in music history – which makes Sheath – the first LFO album for several years – all the more difficult to judge objectively – as someone like Bell is always going to be worth listening to – regardless of whether it’s good. And lets face it, that LFO provided Warp records with their first major hit is reason enough to love them. As a world without Warp simply doesn’t bear thinking about.
The bottom line is this however, if you liked ‘Frequencies’ and ‘Advance’ then you’re going like this one. Yes there’s no real vocal presence (although you do get a Vocoder on ‘Freak’) and yes it’s choc-a-block with bleeps. And yes, it’s vintage techno. Old skool for those of us over thirty – ‘Retro’ for those of you under.
A brief description? Noisy, industrial, clanky, wobbly, funky, itchy, scratchy (‘Mum man’, ‘Snot’ , ‘Mummy I’ve Had An Accident’), whirry, blurry, slippery, slopery, fidgety, liquidy, (‘Blown’ , ‘Premacy’, ‘Mokeylips’ ) dubby and ethereal (‘Sleepy Chicken’) and Bjorky (‘Neverthless’).
It’s not an easy listen, and you’d be hard pressed to find a chart entry amongst ‘Sheath’s desolate sonic debris, but for those of you willing to persevere, you’ll find it every bit as tasty as the Lyte Funky Ones.