From the Vaults – Aliases of Simon Shackleton

From the Vaults is an album series that Simon Shackleton launched back in the autumn of 2019 to house a wealth of material found on DAT tapes in an old bin bag. After the painstaking process of piecing a lot of it back together, Simon has already presented us with 37 remastered Elite Force originals and revamps across two essential albums. The next three albums (actually 4, more info below) that Simon has released since, take us all the way back to the ’90s to explore the eclectic sounds of some of the aliases he morphed in and out of before taking on his most popular guise of them all, Elite Force.

 

Synchromesh 1993 – 1997 (Part One)

Simon’s Synchromesh alias is where we’ll begin because it takes us back to the furthest point in time of his electronic music-making days. 23 tracks are spread across 2 albums and out of the three aliases featured, Synchromesh’s sound bears the closest resemblance to that of Elite Force, especially when it comes to the more peak-time sounding tracks like ContraFlowDeviant and Big Daddy Mainframe. It’s not all about ‘tear your face off’ Breakbeat, though, because there’s a lot of dark and twisted Trip-Hop to be heard in tracks like All The Details, Murder After Murder and One Step Further. Hardly any of the music under Simon’s Synchromesh guise has ever seen the light of day, so for us all, this is a whole new world of exploration into Simon’s musical mind.

As you may well have noticed, the album posted is part one, so to check out and get your hands on part two Click Here.

 

Download this album for free or pay what you like here on Bandcamp.

 

pHrack R – 1996 – 1998

With a musical mind as inquisitive as Simon’s, a certain amount of experimentation with electronic music was always likely to be on the cards and the next two albums definitely express his desire to push the boundaries of what was possible within the Breakbeat spectrum back in the ’90s. This time under his pHrack R guise there’s another selection of mind-altering Trip-Hop tracks like The Beatfreak pt.1, Di Genera and Catch 22 (Skunksyndrome Mix) and there’s even some Drum and Bass with tracks like Sigh.Co, Catch 22 (Junglefunk Mix) and Yardstick providing us with a surprising yet altogether welcomed curve-ball. In between, you’ll find industrial-strength Big-Beat like tracks like That’s What We Are, The Beatfreak pt. 2 & 4 and Computer Deck Acid. For those who like their music a bit more far-out than the others, this is the album for you!

 

Download this album for free or pay what you like here on Bandcamp.

 

Futurecore is the last of Simon’s old aliases that we’re checking in with and this one lasted just a year. Asides from parts 1 and 3 of the epic and evolving 4 part masterpiece that is Dark Fonque, the rest of the tracks on this experimental offering are of the downtempo variety. After all of the anarchic music that has gone down before, a waft of Disco coming from Glitterball comes a welcomed rest bite. A couple of other favourites on this album include the beautiful Beat Breakin’ Mix of Anno Mundi 6000 and the solid Big-Beat groove of Public Enemy Number One.

All of the albums found can be downloaded for free, but if you’re able to, you can pay what you like, which is something we always encourage because we want our favourite producers to be able to carry on making the music that makes our lives feel complete.

 

Download this album for free or pay what you like here on Bandcamp.

 

Links for Simon Shackleton :

Soundcloud / Facebook / Website / Bandcamp / YouTube / Twitter

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