A long time ago, before the existence of Discogs*, I kept notebooks. In those notebooks I used to write down details of records and releases that I’d heard about, liked the sound of, and wanted to get, along with others that I felt I should get to augment my existing collection. I used to be a big Mogwai fan and the notebooks contained lists of their releases – I had a couple, but deemed it necessary that I should get everything they’d released. Such is the mindset of the collector. Very quickly – and even back then, twenty-plus-years before now – I realised that was going to be a very difficult and expensive process. Their earlier releases were pretty hard to find.
So I was pretty pleased to find out about Kicking A Dead Pig, a hefty – two albums and one twelve-inch – collection of remixes of Mogwai work from their Ten Rapid and Young Team releases. I can’t quite remember from where I got it, but I vaguely remember it was shipped from overseas, and wasn’t exactly cheap. But it’s good stuff: remixes from the likes of Hood, Max Tundra, My Bloody Valentine, Arab Strap, µ-ziq, Surgeon and more. It even features Mogwai remixing themselves.
In the late 90s and early 00s it was quite an exploratory time for music. The indie/noise rock/post-rock circles overlapped heavily with the worlds of IDM, electronica and experimental music. Hence, here, some of the best pieces include Surgeon’s superlative rework of ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’, essentially a relentlessly building drone piece that very much reminds me of the most out-there moments of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Alec Empire’s ‘Face the Future’ remix of ‘Like Herod’ which shunts out the familiar Mogwai quiet/loud guitar dynamic with impressively raucous Digital Hardcore-style drum and bass.
At the time of this release I knew nothing whatsoever about Jetset Records. The aforementioned Discogs informs me now that they were New York-based, and also released records by The Go-Betweens, Luna, Teenage Fanclub and The Jesus Lizard – nothing wrong with any of that.
The artwork for this record is pleasant enough: a nicely colour-themed gatefold that’s half-green, half-purple, with mysterious monochrome imagery. The type is simple and effective: on the cover, widely-spaced Garamond for the band name, and oh-so-late-90s-style wordsmashedtogetherwithoutspaces for the release title. The back cover is completely different, typography-wise – see below – which triggers memories of the green/purple colour scheme reflecting two separate remix releases that were joined together to form this one.
*An even longer time ago, way back in the very distant early days of the internet, I began to code a ‘database’ of records – initially containing those I owned – that was essentially a set of interlinked HTML pages that required a huge amount of upkeep whenever something was added that would require cross-referencing with everything else. I dropped the idea quite quickly. Maybe if I’d have stuck with it and learned SQL earlier I’d have created Discogs? And I’d be a Billionaire Tech Titan by now? Who knows.