Bedroom Tapes

As Special Request, Paul Woolford is best known for club cuts that dance teasingly in the space between retro and futurism. But the material on 2019’s *Bedroom Tapes* is a world away from the alien breakbeat rave of *Vortex*, released just a month before. Per the title, the album is sourced from a box of old cassettes that Woolford unearthed while moving. Yet nothing here sounds like juvenilia. He’s clearly in thrall to Aphex Twin: Crisply overdriven drum machines and plangent synth leads have the same punchy presence as the IDM overlord’s mid-’90s music at its most anthemic. A few tracks, like “Phosphorescence,” hint at the big-room piano house that would become a key element of Woolford’s style. But the music is so assured—the synths immaculately programmed, the drums big and beefy, the arrangements efficient—that the claim that these are youthful demos almost defies belief. It hardly matters: This is nothing short of an essential addition to Woolford’s catalog.

Bedroom Tapes is comprised solely of lost material from a recently discovered box of cassettes that emerged in the process of a house move. These tracks capture some of Paul Woolford’s most wide-eyed and naïve creative impulses at a tender age. Seemingly lost forever, some were part of sessions that led to him being signed to now-defunct UK techno imprint Blue Basique. This is the first chapter in this archive and an intimate portrait of the artist at a key stage of his creative development. The tracks have been carefully mastered with a loving hand by Matt Colton who has been meticulous to retain their idiosyncrasies. Released on 2xLP vinyl - Cut and mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis, manufactured at optimal media, Germany.

In perhaps the most mundane reason for a "lost album" ever, Bedroom Tapes, the second of four LPs that Special Request (aka Paul Woolford) w...