Found Sound

The duo of Charlie May and Duncan Forbes came to prominence on William Orbit’s Guerrilla Records — which was a crucible for the mainstream-adjacent sound of progressive house. And indeed their 1993 debut album Gargantuan was a big, chunky dancefloor beast. But Spooky’s world also overlapped the hippie rave world of clubs like Megadog and Megatripolis, and the more experimental electronica of WARP’s Artificial Intelligence series. And it’s this, weirder, side of their music that came to the fore — and then some — on their 1996 follow up. Found Sound fidgets and twitches, it dances down dark subterranean passageways, it is full of eerie melody, and it stands absolutely on its own as a mid 90s electronica gem. Early on, Spooky looked like they might follow the likes of close contemporaries Underworld and Orbital into big arenas, but on the evidence of this album, they much preferred exploring the shadows.