Music Arcades: Various: Macro Dub Infection

A second in the series of ambient/dub/electronica compilations to add to the one we had ten days ago. I've got quite a few of these; they seemed to be quite the thing in the mid-'90s. Or was it just that I got bored buying them after that? Well a lot of the ones I have were in the Virgin Ambient series, which ran from 1993-97, so…

I think I got this one because someone raved about it in The Wire. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Ian Penman, since he's quoted in the sleevenotes. And within a few years of that The Wire had appropriated the idea, offering albums quite similar to this in its Wire Tapper covermount series. I paid a hefty £16.99 for this double-CD set, but that wouldn't happen now.

To get the most out of the music, you'd want to play it on a good stereo, but I'm not sure if I ever have: I've always listened to it as a companion to work, either on the old CD boombox I had in my Workstation office, or more recently on my computer.

As I've said of some in the Wire Tapper series, it can be easy to miss the different personalities of the tracks and artists as they tend to blur into each other. The mood is quite consistent — dark, broody ambience — so anything that even hints at breaking that mood, such as The Mad Professor's quoting of a Michael Jackson bass line, stands out as a welcome injection of humour.