Over the course of ten active years, Sandwell District were responsible for disarming and destabilizing the structures that gagged free-form expression, drawing upon tenets of DIY-post-punk culture to disrupt accepted ideas of exactly what it meant to be an artist, label, DJ or producer. During this time, the collective’s core members, Function (Dave Sumner) and Regis (Karl O’Connor) (along with label partner, Silent Servant), played a key role in broadening the link between early electronic, post-punk, and noise; an influence which continues to resonate in the burgeoning, and shape-shifting, modern-day techno scene. With this mix, another genuine artefact has been added to the Sandwell legacy, a document of their skewed presence and existence, a treasure guaranteeing the kind of quality that electronic music compilations rarely achieve. In 1 hour 15 minutes, the pairing of Regis and Function succeed in presenting and executing some of the most potent flourishes in the Sandwell catalogue, distilling them into a coherent body of work that masterfully defines the current techno zeitgeist. Few contemporary producers have bettered the merciless techno blueprint laid down by this collective, and few ever will.
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