Theorizing that one could time travel within their own lifetime, 20jazzfunkgreats led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove their theories or lose funding, 20jazzfunkgreats prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished. They awoke to find themselves in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not their own. Fortunately, contact with their own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram, that only 20jazzfunkgreats can see and hear. Trapped in the past, 20jazzfunkgreats finds themselves leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that their next leap will be the leap home.

Goddamit. This shit feels like being stamped on by Zeus’s henchmen after being cut into 10,000 slivers by a galatic egg slicer. It really smarts. Right, where the frik are we? Just need to find a mirro…JESUS CHRIST what’s that? Oh, it’s only our new face. Looking kinda rough. Seem to be in a teenagers bedroom of some kind. There’s a girl passed out on the bed. I hope we’re not too late. Oh, it’s OK she’s alive. Would guess from the remorseless pounding coming through the floor there’s a party going on downstairs. Best to check it out, want to get the hell out of here ASAFP.

Party was right. Not that our swiss cheese brain can remember what a party was like. Pretty sure it wasn’t a bunch of teenagers drunk on booze, high on Marijuana and listening to New Beat though. Or was it? What language are they speaking? luckily we were trained to a high degree of fluency in all world languages, along with all major martial arts and mathematical disciplines before coming here. Shame we can’t remember any of them. At a push we would say it was one of the northern European Germanic dialects, let’s go with maybe….Dutch. If that guy doesn’t stop tapping us on the shoulder we’re going punch to his lig……Oh, hi Al.

What in frig’s name is going on? ‘Oh well according to Ziggy your name is Wilfred’. Yeah that’s really useful Al, anything else? Quickly, before we have a go on this jazz cigarette. ‘Ah well, the location has been identified as Breda, which according to Ziggipedia is a town in the southern Netherlands. And??? ‘See that guy over there DJing?’ Yeeeeas. ‘His name is Tijs Michiel Verwest, he might be playing some quality New Beat tracks right now, but tomorrow he goes to a record store and buys ’9.p.m. til I Come’ by ATB’

What’s wrong with that? our warped, fucked-up, rotting memory seems to remember that was a great record.’No but you don’t understand, according to Ziggy, in 2010 Tijs Michiel Verwest is charging people 140 euros a ticket to watch him mix ‘The Scatman’ very badly into some other chart trance anthems and calling himself  ’The World’s Greatest DJ’. That record literally changes his life. In order to leap back to your happy life as a grumpy blogger, you need to convince him to buy a different record in that store tomorrow, or the whole world is doomed, and you will be stuck here as his manager forever. You have 3 paragraphs.’

Where can we begin with Concentration vol. 1? It took us 2 weeks to even pick something from the vastness of its mitigating fermament, let alone any words decent enough to grace its many complex charms.  Lovefingers and the whole ESP Institute crew have collaborated on a mix so vast, plotting co-ordinates from dangerously tantric prog-funk fantasies to house music made out of records so obscure, the original artists forgot they’d even made them - educating and soothing our calamitous souls like a tube of Deep Heat rubbed into Satan’s back muscles. ‘Mensa’ supplied by Sombrero Galaxy was peaking on our subliminality bar chart today, so prey let us share. This is obvs from a mixed CD so it cuts in a little sharp…..

ESP Institute – Mensa

Mensa is the psychic on-stage antics of a 13 piece synth-boogie band beautifully rendered in VHS. No sound comes from their amps, their matching uniforms are blue screen devices for the projection of your soul. Outside the venue, an HD universe tries to get in, seeping through cracks and window frames in time. There is only one way out of here, and it’s upon the transcendent flourish of a dexterous soloist embellished with the soul-glo of the chosen one.

Concentration vol 1 is out now from all regular vendors, with all proceeds rather heartwarmingly going to the Harmony Project charity.

San Francisco’s Hunt with a Cat dropped some Demos on our doorstep like an abandoned Apollyonsprog.

Hunt With a Cat – Wrapped in Rope

With weapons so often deployed on these pages, ‘Wrapped in Rope’ attacks from a different angle, occupying regenerated territories, swooping down over a hematic dirtplane where Phuture armies battles with a Hawnay Troof in the name of tenebrous Basement Jamz.  Watching on screen we select the deadly button combo of button X + button A whilst twisting joypole 2 in a 3 quarters semi-perpendicular motion to unleash pixelated napalm all over a platoon of skeletal drum machine warriors in an act of digital genocide that was strictly just for kicks, mister.

As we said these are demos, so no release info. But if any A+R mans be reading, it’s time to flip out the chequebook wethinks.

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with prog rave