Great record. Hats off, Mr Smith. Love this story :)

Not sure what Dean Marriott had to do with Rewind?

There are few electronic and dance records that have some mythical or legendary yarn worth spinning beyond the turntable platter. The very best of them include Orbital’s ‘Chime’ recorded onto tape and costing less than £1 to produce. Then there is the story of chance when punk new waver Gary Numan turned up to record his latest tracks to find a Minimoog had been left in the studio. The Numanoid picked it up, recorded a bunch of groundbreaking electronic tracks and the rest is history. So it is where history comes crashing together for Sheffield based label CPU Recordings 50th release. Not only is it impressive that CPU has made it to its half century release, but for that milestone it has totally rebuilt two Sheffield Bleep classics from scratch. Flashback to over quarter of a century ago and Sheffield was the hub for an vibrant electronic music scene that was buzzing around the likes of Warp Records, pirate radio and several cutting edge underground nights. In among that scene several bleep techno classics were appearing and none more interesting and mythical than a set of four 12 inches over the course of 12 months by the artist Detromental. All with minimal information on their white labels, all either stamped or handwritten, all feeling and sounding over-worldly whilst very local to South Yorkshire. The tracks ingrained themselves into the mind of CPU Recordings label boss CP Smith for the next 25 years as he tried to discover who was behind the brooding, bubbling basslines and metronomic drum patterns. Eventually piece by piece it was revealed that the tracks had been created by Dean Marriott and Lloyd Douglas with only a small run of them pressed. An attempt to source original sound files for licensing purposes proved unfruitful and after much effort and discussion with Marriott there was only one option left open to Smith. That was to build the tracks from scratch using originally sourced pieces of recording equipment, finding each component sound and piecing it back together. Cover versions are a tricky business at the best of times, they are either too close to the original or too far that they can sound utterly horrendous (see José Feliciano’s destruction of Sting’s ‘Every Breath you Take’ for an example of this). Yet the sheer effort to build this using analogue equipment, no soft synths or resampling of the original on show here, is a testament to Smith’s incredible passion for a golden period in Sheffield’s rich music history. It is also telling of his technical ability as a music producer, something he sadly does not do enough of. The two tracks ‘Rewind’ and ‘Move’ have travelled time, they sit somewhere in 1991 but also comfortably in 2017. With a clean and polished sound they are good enough to have been released by electronic giants Warp then and now. It is indeed their loss, but the connection is moved even closer with the release being treated with the iconic classic purple sleeve complete with binary catalogue number and CPU logo. With the original records going for in excess of £50 on Discogs, it really is a no brainer to track down a copy of these special rebuilds before they too sell out and start to go for similar amounts.

12 for sale starting from €30 just a few months after the release date. Sad to see this knowing that there are many people who couldn't manage to get a copy last summer...

The full story behind the rebuilt can be read on the factmag website:http://www.factmag.com/2017/05/27/how-to-remake-a-bleep-techno-classic-detromental/

Great rebuilt of those classic bleep techno tracks. A-side is on the spot!

These tracks have been re-done by the CPU label boss, with the approval of Detromental, the original masters beeing lost.