rnd - transform II

a few months or so i went to peruse one of the charity-shops in the greater stockholm region, it's a store that i've found very good stuff over the last year. this time i found a number of things but one of them being the ohm records label cd compilation.

ohm was one of the first swedish dancemusic labels and it had a little run before other stockholm labels such as planet rhythm, loop and later drumcode, h productions and svek became the more prolific ones. this compilation is valuable to the heads and i think the vinyl issue changes hands for fifty quids.

the compilation has a number of leiner productions, a few cari lekebusch ones and tracks from some other obscure producers. i was happy to find it because it includes the almost the full selftitled robert leiner/source ep. it's missing the the track "random input" but to be honest that track is rubbish anyways. but it does include "levitation" and owning it on a physical format is blissful.

overall some of the tracks have not dated well an they don't work in any way with the music i play in any way but some are useful such as source's "levitation", andromatic's "pure energy", trauma's "coming up good", cerebus' "nechromancer" and then "transform II" from fredrik almquist aka rnd.

i've got to be honest that i'm not that familiar with almquist's backcatalogue but i do know that was a key player in the swedish techno scene but he didn't become the name that adam beyer, cari lekebusch and joel mull did, then again so didn't leiner but he had glory days before being forgotten by a whole generation.

"tranform II" is an electro track and it has the robotic and metallic elements that i love. it also has some key sounds that's in line with the kind of trance or techno influenced electro that was being made in europe after the 80's. after hearing this i did try to find any other of the tracks that almquist made during this period and i found that it did sound like them.

the closest one would be the rnd remix of cyro lab's (that's another almquist moniker) "robotopia" but that is only electro during the intro and then it goes into the trancy sounds that he was making at the time. but aurally it's all there only the trancy/techno productions where a little fuller in it's 4/4 groove.

the thing i like about "transform II" is that it does go on the subtle side and the melodic aspects are in line with the sound and there is no cliché except for how the vocal sample is worked. i also love the bubbly sounds coming through in the second half and especially the filtered not-acid line that's there in the background.