Headphoneasy Rider

Baby Ford (aka Peter Adshead) has somehow managed, repeatedly, to achieve one of techno’s most rarely achieved goals – the truly compelling full-length album. Headphoneasy Rider was his second such achievement, after 1992’s BFORD 9. By this time, his Ifach label was well established, producing a run of peerless 12” singles that explored a similar brittle minimalism to the likes of Wolfgang Voigt (via his Studio 1 and Freiland series), though the Baby Ford productions cleave, more loosely, towards bumptious house. It’s the subtle humour that shines through Headphoneasy Rider – the repeated string clonk that punctuates “baggy or tight”; the analog groand of “Spiritworks.” He’s a master of tension, and of finding just the right coordinates to keep minimalism completely compelling.