Ransom Note Records are over the moon to launch new sub-label, Dance Music From Planet Earth, with a compilation of rave heritage from the mighty Richard Sen, who presents Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House and Breakbeat 1990-1994.
Back in the mid 1990s, Richard was DJing at a festival in the Czech Republic and some of the girls were staring, enamoured shouting; “Richard Dream”. He later discovered that his surname, Sen, meant ‘dream’ in Czech. Around the same time, he was meditating on the raves he had been visiting, starting a fledgling career as a DJ and dreaming of becoming successful. One of those raves was the infamous KAOS Weekender in 1990, where he took the photos used for the artwork on this record. They possess a dreamlike atmosphere... he knew they’d come in handy one day!
From 1989 onwards, Richard was an obsessive collector of house and techno music, frequenting legendary London record shops such as Fat Cat, Silverfish, Trax and Red Records. He took record buying trips to New York to find second-hand disco, house and techno 12”s, which were lying around in bargain bins. The selection for this compilation are his own personal favourites from that era. Back then, electronic dance music was young, innocent and fun; it hadn’t been analysed, theorised and fragmented into the multi-genre industry it is today.
What you hear on this compilation reflects what he was playing at that time; joining the dots between ambient, techno, tribal house, breakbeat and early trance productions from the UK. Much house and techno from the US, Belgium, Germany and Holland has been well documented, but some of the more obscure British productions are lesser known and need to be showcased.
Hopefully, these tracks will inspire and educate a new generation of electronic music fans who weren’t born then and also trigger some acid flashbacks for the older ravers as they take a trip down memory lane.