Welcome to the very first Vintage Solid Steel, brought to you by bosbos.net in conjunction with Ninja Tune’s ‘Solid Steel’ radio show. Solid Steel has been delivering the broadest beats for 20 years, resulting in a hefty archive to mine for some classic shows to listen to and enjoy. Thanks to the efforts of DJ Food’s Strictly Kev, our opening salvo is a legendary show dating back to 1991, where Coldcut meets The Orb. Parts 1+2 of the show are available via the Solid Steel podcast, and bosbos.net is offering up parts 3+4 to round things off.

You can expect to see many more Vintage Solid Steels as time goes on, focusing on the best of the best shows that have hit the airwaves over the years, so be sure to check in on a regular basis. We’ll hand over to Strictly Kev as he reminisces back to ‘91, filling in the blanks (and hopes you can too!):

In ‘91 Coldcut were struggling to get their fledgling Ninja Tune label off the ground after enjoying immense success in the late 80’s with international No.1’s, award winning remixes and hot producer status. After label problems they went back to their roots and kept a low profile whilst maintaining their weekly 2 hour radio show on London’s KISS FM. In ‘91 The Orb were just taking off into the big time, their own label problems a few years ahead of them. Their Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld album and its satellite singles had gathered underground kudos and they were recording the follow up: U.F.Orb. Most people would agree that ‘92 was the peak year for the Orb, in terms of success, with the second album touching down at No.1 after the first week of release and sold out shows everywhere. On the cusp of the new year - no one can quite remember whether it was Xmas or New Year’s Eve - the two met and this glorious offspring was the result.

I have particularly fond memories of this show as it was the first Solid Steel I actually recorded, mainly because of the Orb connection at the time. I had discovered ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ the year before on the CND compilation Give Peace A Dance and eagerly hoovered up everything I could find. Now the prospect of this great ‘new’ group coupled with old favourites Coldcut was too good to be true. A radio trail with a female voice whispering ‘Coldcut versus the Orb’ had alerted me to it and I set up the tape machine, lay back and blew my mind.

A couple of years later I was put in touch with Matt Black by Mixmaster Morris and invited him to VJ at one of my Telepathic Fish parties. Having listened to the aforementioned mix many times by now, I had always wondered what the opening track was, having never heard or found any details about it anywhere else. I asked him about it and straight away he said “it’s by me, but the others at Ninja aren’t sure about it so it hasn’t come out”. I told him it was totally relevant right now (this was just as the whole ‘trip hop’ fad was about to kick off) and that he should push for it to come out. It ended up being included on the Ninja Tune version of Coldcut’s Philosophy LP and on the bonus disc on the first Ninja Cuts compilation.

This collection of tracks is unique in that there are some early versions of U.F.Orb tracks included that, to the best of my knowledge, still haven’t appeared anywhere else apart from the 14 minute segment that turned up on a lot of Orb bootlegs in the early 90’s. The show also unknowingly turned me on to loads of material I later recognised as having heard here first, such as Eno & Byrne’s My Life in The Bush of Ghosts and The Tape Beatles’ work. Pieces of spoken word like Jesse Jackson’s ‘I Am Somebody’ and the Brother Ahh ‘Love Piece’ preacher sermon were first encountered here and subsequently included on our Now, Listen mix CD in 2001.There are still pieces of the puzzle I’d like to find too: for instance, the incredible acid tracks that play from nine minutes in in part 3 - anyone know what the hell they are? I love the slapdashness of it as well, with Coldcut’s tight mixing contrasting with Alex’s throw-everything-in-and-see-what-sticks approach.

For the first time, I’ve attempted to piece together a tracklist for this monster mix; tracks in italics are spoken word slurped over the top of music to try and make it all easier to understand. If anyone knows any of the missing tracks I’d be very grateful to fill in the blanks. We’ve assembled the complete 2 hours, uncut (including no tape turnover breaks), from the best quality sources we could find. There is no master recording for this show in the Coldcut archives so, unless the good Dr Alex Paterson has a copy or someone is holding one with pristine reception, then this is the best we can do. A couple of sections pop up on the Coldcut DAT archive (Kiss Mix 4 & 15A) but we chose to keep a copy straight from the radio because KISS FM had particularly good compression when shows were broadcast and the DAT recordings sounded very flat in comparison.

Enjoy.

Strictly Kev

[Coldcut Meets The Orb - Parts 3+4] (51mins, 70MB)

Tracklisting

Part 3 (24:21)

1. Coldcut - Greetings Music Lovers… Music Like Shower jingle
2. KT & Hex - Global Chaos (Ninja Tune)
3. ? - Unknown Preacher
4. ? - Techno track
5. Hex - Digital Love Opus No.1 (Ninja Tune)
6. Brother Ahh - Love Piece (Strata East)
7. Public Works - Message… (Staalplaat)
8. ? - Amazing acid track
9. The Space Race dialogue
10. ? - Amazing techno track
11. Public Works - Blue Beautiful Place (Staalplaat)
    
12. Public Works - Different Tool (Staalplaat)
    
13. Public Works - Metro-pulse (Staalplaat)
14. Coldcut - This is the House of Mystery jingle

Part 4 (26:54)

1. K Mix 14: Exocet Dub Chapter 1 - Coldcut mix section
2. Depth Charge - Dead By Dawn intro (Vinyl Solution)
3. Depth Charge - Bounty Killers (Death Is Ma Name) (Vinyl Solution)
4. Pharoah Chapter 1 - Pumpty Pump (Shabienian Arthouse)
5. DJ Food - Victory Strut (Ninja Tune)
6. Pharoah Chapter 1 - Vigilante (Shabienian Arthouse)
7. Depth Charge - Depth Charge (Drum Death) (Vinyl Solution)
8. Tackhead - Mind At The End of the Tether (ON-U Sound)
9. Sparky ’s Magic Piano - Sparky & The Talking Train (Capitol)
10. The Orb - Towers of Dub (unknown version) (Big Life)
11. ? - sitar/tabla track

Artwork supplied by Strictly Kev.

** Honourable mentions to the SS archival crew - Megatrip, Mr Naga, Pads and Paul. This is just the beginning… we’re just getting started! **