“The doors are where the windows should be, and the windows are where the doors should be…”
One of the more disconcerting cuts of the acid house era, Earth Leakage Trip’s No Idea, is set to receive a welcome re-release on Blank Mind, more than 30 years on from its initial release.
Sampling the movie Poltergeist, as well as a children’s record called Happy Monsters (specifically the track Adventures in the Land of Ooog), the track formed part of the Psychotronic EP, a seriously trippy selection of tracks originally released on the legendary Moving Shadow label.
Earth Leakage Trip’s Neil Sandford had been writing music for a few years before playing some demos to Moving Shadow head honcho Rob Playford in his car outside a nightclub in Wood Green, some time at the start of the 90s. Fellow bandmate Simon Carter then got involved, and the due went to Playford’s studio to manifest the madness they’d been sketching with rudimentary gear.
No Idea‘s use of samples meant that the track blended both bleep techno beats and psychedelia – far more surreal than many of the tracks that would go on to follow it on the then-nascent Moving Shadow imprint.
Sandford had his doubts about whether the samples would work – but while working on the track, Rob Playford’s reportedly girlfriend ran in shouting, “you HAVE to use that!” And so it came to be.
No Idea would go on to be featured on Orbital’s Back To Mine compilation, released in 2002 – the ideal setting for a post-club mindf**k of a record.
As musician and writer Piers Harrison puts it, “The Psychotronic EP is a truly visionary piece of work, standing poised on the edge of the rave’s burgeoning future and entirely outside it.
“As such, it’s never not been a cool record, as appealing to lysergic adventurers as it is to house heads, hardcore ravers, or experimental music pioneers. And it has now been lovingly reissued by Blank Mind, for which I’m eternally grateful, seeing as my copy is battered beyond belief.”
Earth Leakage Trip – Psychotronic EP will be released on Blank Mind on 2 May 2022. Click here for details.