The early Acid House scene is not to be underestimated in terms of size, scope and influence to this day. Without this particular scene of music, there would be no such thing as EDM, or the cutting-edge music of people such as Skrillex, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Tiesto or many, many other household namesake musicians. That is literally how important it was at the time, and especially so in retrospect. A new form of music emerged to take on the pre-existing genres of Pop and Rock to make something new and exciting, and although the umbrella term of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) exists today, it really all began with Acid House which really took off from around 1987 onwards. LFO is a by-product of that early scene a few years later in 1991, and this is their important and critically acclaimed release from then, a little after the original Acid House scene evolved and diversified into other strands of Electronic based music. Let’s take a good listen to this album, widely received as a classic today.

Intro launches this album off with some Acid bleeps, downpitched vocals and a great deal of suspense here. It gradually builds up with a multitude of Acid bleeps, followed quickly by some basic Roland beats. By today’s standards, this is fairly primitive sounding, but really addictive listening. A clever and cool Acid House riff eventually emerges in the middle of this piece, continuing on nicely throughout the tune. A great piece of music with some very Socialistic (yes, politically) down-pitched vocals. Nonetheless, this is great. It eventually finishes quickly, but is a good start to the album, although rather minimal.

LFO – Leeds Warehouse Mix begins with some beeps and bleeps, with some matching Electronic string sounds. It quickly launches into a great Techno/Acid House piece that is catchy, danceable and lovable. Obviously, this is an immediate winner for a piece of music of this sort. There are a huge variety of Roland based drum machine sounds and textures. Upon hearing this, no matter if you dig Electronic music or not, one can sense the historical importance of this track, and indeed, the album. It is brilliant. The subsonic bass breakdown is brief but sweet. This is a great and retro 1991 piece that takes one’s mind back to the EDM music of the past but still sounds awesome and brilliant today. If you feel like being a bit of a retro musical nerd, this piece of music should fit the bill nicely. A spacey, psychedelic and futuristic listening experience, this is one not just for musical history fans, but for ecstasy loving ravers as well. A great and brilliant listening experience throughout, although minimal by today’s standards, this is a great addition to anyone’s Electronic music collection. An awesome listen from start to finish. It ends with some proto-IDM textures and subsonic bass. Different.

Simon From Sydney is a clear reference to the famous Australian city, which ironically is often thought of as the capital of the country. It isn’t. This begins with an ethereal musical string styled loop that sounds spacey and different, taking one’s mind elsewhere. Soon enough, some great and amazing electronic sounds and loops enter, sounding like the musical equivalent of lasers. A great and cool piece of music, this sounds extremely lively and wonderful throughout. The minimal and well-crafted melodies are so good that you will be bopping along to these classics of Electronic music. A really excellent and lively piece of music, this sounds super cool and lively. There is a breakdown in the middle of the tune, which is followed by the rhythms and beats from the first half. This is ingenious music, believe it or not. Sure, it may be following a fairly common Acid House and Techno flavoured musical sounding phenomenon, but this sounds really outstanding. The melodies are some of the best you will hear in musical history. A lively, powerful and interesting tune, this makes as much sense to hear in the background at home as well as in a nightclub. Great tune, it wraps up after five minutes suddenly. Excellent.

Nurture begins with some rather odd science fiction glassy melodies. It launches into a very artistic and psychedelic piece of music that is intricate and weird. This four minute long piece of music will not be to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly sounds quite good from an Electronic perspective. The best way to describe this particular track? Weird and wonderful. The music on this album is also somewhat irregular, just sounding spaced out. A really fantastic and grand piece of music, this does sound very intense and quirky. Revolutionary no doubt at the time, although very dated today, the music on this album sought to break away from some of the more predictable elements of Acid House and make something a little more leftfield, pun intended. Nonetheless, another good piece of music here. Good to hear, although this particular track is very weird.

Freeze begins with some unorthodox and minimal pounding drum beats, launching into a proto-IDM based musical piece that sounds quirky, relevant and different. Again, this is an essential listen in the back catalogue of musical history. Sure to be fair this is not going to make everyone pleased, but this is an interesting and joyful tune to listen to. This album perfectly mixes Acid House, Techno, EDM, IDM and other great conceptual sounds into a mellifluous piece of perfection. All in all, this is a simple yet danceable album, and this tune is no different. This also sounds a lot like where Radiohead may have thought up their Kid A and Amnesiac album sounds from, those albums also being fairly heavily experimental Electronic music. This is a strange tune but it does not outstay its welcome. A good listen, and an enjoyable track.

We Are Back has some robotic vocals at the start, which sound really cool. This quickly launches into an extremely catchy and unique piece of Techno that is surprisingly catchy for its dated weirdness. Bear in mind that, much like The Beatles, just because this music is hypothetically old, doesn’t mean it is bad in any way. This sounds like a bad Techno and Acid House nightmare and is something one would be best listening to sober rather than wasted. Regardless, this does sound excellent. The quality of the melodies here are really cool and great. A forward thinking tune, even back in 1991, this does sound cleverly executed and points ahead to the end of Rock music (commercially) and towards a computer dominant future. A good listen, although likely a little too repetitive and lengthy here. All the same, this is not overly dissimilar to the Prodigy’s first album: a brilliant conceptual album of music that dated extremely quickly. This does sound cool, though. Very good EDM to enjoy.

Tan Ta Ra has the Electronic equivalent of a wah-wah guitar, followed by some intricate and intertwining melodies. This quickly launches into a cool piece of melodicism with church bells and other glorious sounds to match. Very weird, but as cool as can be. This is a somewhat less orthodox piece than what has come before it, and the music here is very intricate and sounds like it is a great musical addition to the album. This definitely comes across as fairly weird. Also, your average Dubstep fan today will unlikely like the primitive nature of this album. Still, it works incredibly well and one can understand why this album was made. Although many music fans would dismiss this music as boring today, upon closer listening, these are some revolutionary melodies, some of the best ever made in EDM. This piece could have been shortened a little, but regardless, it is a cool listen. Sweet.

You Have To Understand is a more traditional rhythmic piece with Roland beats galore. It has a repeated and pitch-shifted female vocal sample of the track name, launching into another minimal yet decent tune. Although, again, this is a great set of melodies and sounds, this is extremely dated. Regardless, the music here was groundbreaking at the time. This is not one of the better tracks from this album, however, and it sounds a little forced in terms of its effort. All the same, this is still very good. The midsection is cool, quirky and Techno sounding. Very weird and simple by today’s standards, this is not a standout tune from this album. It sounds like a lucid dream set to music, inspired by drug use of some sort. Nonetheless, this is simple music but is not as thrilling or relevant today as it could be. Some gentle editing could benefit this otherwise good piece of music. It’s not bad but could be better for the sake of the album.

El Ef Oh! is a better piece, with some truly awesome vocal samples that are mixed with sound effects. Creative, all right. Perhaps some listeners out there would like what these guys were smoking, at the time, by anyone’s guess. Drug influenced sounds aside, this does sound really cool and amazing to this day. The mixture of ambient sounds, melodicism, cut-up textures and cool beats make this a winner. A great listen, no matter how you think Electronic music should sound, this is cool and clever. Proof that old school doesn’t mean too old to hear, this is an intricate sonic adventure throughout. Wonderful music to enjoy from 1991, this is a chilled musical piece that more should hear today. Very catchy, and different too. It ends with bleeps and beats, great.

Love Is The Message begins with some keyboard patch crystal style sounds, quickly launching into an awful track. This is incredibly disappointing, as before it, this album was fairly consistently good. The female soul vocal samples do not match the horrid and discordant mixture of sounds, either. Nonetheless, this is okay musically, but it is extremely difficult to appreciate in a holistic sense. From a structure based perspective, it is very good, but sonically it is awful. In any case, you don’t need to hear this particular track, simply hit skip and justice is done. Or you can sit through it, as it is under four minutes in length and although it is poor, it fits neatly with the rest of the sonic concept of this album. It’s fairly mediocre, but then again, most great albums have some naff tracks from time to time. Sadly, this is one of them. It wraps up quickly.

Mentok 1 is another piece that doesn’t sound too good. It seems that the first half of the album is pleasant to listen to, whilst, towards the end of the album, the ideal sounds and textures do not sound as good as they could be. Regardless, this is an improvement on the previous tune, with a more percussive feel and handclaps galore. If you just listen to the percussion and dance along, you will enjoy this. Otherwise, a better effort could have been done here. Still, an improvement is an improvement, and this is fairly listenable. The textures and wind styled whooshes are cool in the middle, before the second half of this tune pounds along well. A really cool listen towards the end, this gets better as it goes along. An enjoyable listen, even with its imperfections. Very creative. It ends with some simple percussion and more wind styled whooshes.

Think A Moment begins with some strange atmospheric sounds and beats that are very unorthodox. A good tune emerges from this, and we are on our way to sonic bliss. Again, this is aged, but a lot like some good cigars, or fine wine, aged well rather than just getting old. Especially good to hear via headphones, it does have some intricacies in the melodies and percussion here. A futuristic sounding tune that has some appeal to Technoheads out there, this is simple, yet wonderful music. This tune is reminiscent of an older science fiction film favourite from the late 1980s/early 1990s that you stock at home: strange yet uber cool. A good addition to this album, this is quite adventurous sonically. Another decent listen.

Groovy Distortion is a good name for a tune of this sort. This is basically what it is, a piece of beats and melodies cut up in an IDM fashion with a lot of overdriven style distortion. By that, it is not guitar overdrive distortion, but distortion via sound editing. All the same, this is an excellent listen from this album. This may come across as a niche album in many ways, but having said that, it still works well musically. Another Acid House/Techno piece that musical historians should appreciate, this does have some wonderful sounds and textures abound. A very good listening experience, just as we head towards the end of this interesting album. A good piece of music, it concludes with some spacey melodies.

Track 14 is the very last tune here, and it has some strange and dark sounds present in it. Soon enough, beats and sounds emerge that sound really excellent. Surprisingly for a final cut, LFO does not make a poor effort here. This is the most proto-IDM piece one can think of, with Breakbeats mixed with Trap like beats, years before either genre was really a thing. Which is super cool in retrospect. In any case, this is a good listen and finishes off a very good album that, although bare-boned sonically, works wonders if you listen carefully. A very good tune, and proof that some people, even in the past, can pave the way and even predict the future of music. The outro has some very cool and catchy beats from before, but just on their own. Nice work.

LFO did in many ways make a classic album here in many respects. It appeals to those EDM fans who want a good dose of Acid House, Rave, Breakbeat, Techno and proto-IDM all moulded into one. The biggest flaw, unfortunately, is that it sounds extremely minimal and yes, somewhat dated today as a result. Sadly, this will disappoint some in that respect. However, for those who enjoy something a bit different and an album from 1991 (apart from Nevermind by Nirvana) that was very revolutionary at the time, this is it. A cool and intellectual listen, even with its flaws.

Decent, intellectual and minimal EDM.

7/10