This is in the running for daftest album title so far…
There was a feature on the New York 'illbient' scene in The Wire in '96 or '97, which I'm sure was based around the Ashpodel label and this album in particular. I don't think the term caught on anywhere else.
I bought this on 1 October 1997 from Piccadilly Records in Manchester — the first and only time I went there (I'm not big on shopping trips). I went there with Gill. I think we were attending the launch of something like the Northern Quarter Network's new web site, and timed our train to give us a chance for some browsing on the way.
I kept this in the office, and Gill really liked it. In fact she used to put it on and I'd ask, "What's this, then?". "It's one of yours!", she'd reply. Like Baked Beans, it's another one I'd play on auto-repeat in the evening, without knowing any of the tracks, the artists, or even where the CD started and finished.
In fact I'm not sure I'd ever heard this album on anything other than the crappy office Sony CD player until yesterday. Illbient is supposed to add "the right amount of tension to ambient music and explore a heightened level of subtlety in trip hop" according to the official web site. By and large, though, this is just the same as the stuff that had been trading under the label 'ambient dub' for several years by this point. Hearing it on proper speakers brings out the dub bits better than I'd heard them before. I particularly like the We tracks, The Chinatown Dub and You.
I met DJ Spooky, who has three tracks on this compilation, when he spoke at the 2003 Cybersonica Symposium, which I organised. I thought he might be a bit hipper-than-thou, but he was gracious and charming to everyone.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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