Music For Robots

October 3, 2006 | Posted by Blair at 1:20 PM

Back in the saddle

mmm

Bola is the production alias of Mancunian electronic musician, Darrell Fitton. I first heard his work when I lived in Manchester - being there in the late 90s meant hearing a lot of artists making music in a particular electronic scene, including Autechre, Plaid and Boards of Canada. I immediately fell in love with Bola's deep-water sonics and electro-ambient trickery, thanks in no small part to his Soup album, released in 1998 by Manchester-based SKAM (home to Gescom, Jega, the old-school BOC releases, etc.).

This track, "Ballast" was originally released in 1999 (or was it 2000? I haven't been able to get a solid answer on that yet), as part of a 12" triple-pack of untitled records, only marked with geometric shapes on the labels and shape names with numbers after them in the run-out-grooves. Apparently it was suspected that it was Bola's work, but wasn't confirmed until now. SKAM pulled the DAT tapes out of storage and had the tracks re-mastered, including three previously-unreleased tracks, along with dual-titles given to all the tracks (name + shape), under the oh-so-appropriate title Shapes. The original release was limited to 300 copies, so for fans of Bola, this is a real boon. The flip-side is that those collectors that hoarded the original vinyl copies will likely be disappointed to not be in such an exclusive aural club anymore, but hey guys, share the wealth!

You can order Shapes direct from SKAM via their catalog pages (you can even download the album from them as MP3s) - or for those of you in the US, you can get it from our friends at Forced Exposure, and as it was released just last week, it should be available now.

Enjoy!

/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/
PS:
My trip to Chicago was rock-solid - I can't say "thank you" enough to Mark and the Dark Wave Disco crew for taking good care of me, and to Davis and the Walter Meego boys for putting me up and making my long-weekend a kick-ass one. To the people that came out to the party (I mean, parties, since I also hit up a house party via the Beatkids), I'll definitely be back to kick it again soon! Rock on!

PPS:
Tomorrow night - Wednesday October 4th - is the first of many We Are Your Friends parties, and I will be rocking the decks, alongside Alex from the Creature and John XI from !!!/Free Blood.

WAYF is in the basement of Fontana's (Eldridge btw Grand & Broome) - 'tis Free and there will be lots of hot action, so come party with us!

Comments

You are so awesome! Thanks for posting--you're going to rock it!

Posted by: Anna at October 3, 2006 3:30 PM

I picked up a copy of Shapes at Rough Trade the day it came out...a friend of mine had told me to track down Soup as soon as I got to London...the clerks at Rough Trade grabbed me a copy of Soup, and then grabbed me a copy of this and said, "This is also Bola....we promise....limited to 300...don't miss out."

So, I got it...I'm one of 300....apparently over the years I didn't realize how big this had gotten...

Here's my question...anyone wanna buy the triple LP? what's it worth these days...i've heard varying figures....

Posted by: adam at October 4, 2006 5:17 PM

1. no, thanks
2. no idea, but I'd guess $50-100ish off the top of my head. limited release, but you lack the Beatles/Queen/Stones fanbase to hit real money. but hey, if you can get the $200-300 for which I see it listed here and there, great.
3. collector-scum love reissues. they raise interest, increase market value, and provide better exit points.

Nice track, either way.

Posted by: wcw at October 4, 2006 10:16 PM

The 'shapes' album was going for about Â£70-Â£80. I'm guessing that it might be a little less than that now as the Skam frenzy seems to be dying down a bit.... you'd still easily get 50 quid though.

Posted by: james at October 6, 2006 6:26 AM