Rob Gordon Projects

There’s a strong case to be made for Rob Gordon as THE founding father of UK bass music in the modern era. He was in-house engineer in Sheffield’s FON studios, working on prestigious 80s art-rock and electronic projects — but the arrival of techno turned everything upside down. A co-founder of WARP records and member of Forgemasters who made the label’s first release (as well as many other projects including the epochally great XON with Richard H Kirk), he engineered many of the “bleep and bass” tunes at the turn of the 90s which put the subsonic dubwise heft into hardcore, jungle and all that followed. Disenchanted with the industry he stopped releasing music in the mid 90s, but not before David “Move D” Moufang could pull together this 1996 compilation of rare and unreleased tracks, including collaborations with Sheffield friends like DJ Mink, techno mainstays Richie Hawtin and “Evil” Eddie Richards, and Moufang himself. It touches on dub, promo jungle, Detroit techno and classic bleep and bass, and the funkiness, dub depth and relentless hooky riffs make pretty much every track sound devastating, even years later.