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R & S Records represents the initials of Renaat Vandepapeliere and Sabine Maes, the couple that created this label in Belgium. A label that broke so many techno and electronic names in the early 1990’s, the stallion was always proud and erect (erm..that’s the label logo I’m on about).

Like, before Aphex Twin was the windowlickin’ superstar of WARP Records, he was on R&S and the two tracks on the ‘classics’ CD are still huge, ‘Analogue Bubblebath’ and ‘Didgeridoo’.

Other names such as Ken Ishii, System 7, µ-Ziq, Jonny L and International Deejay Gigolo himself, DJ Hell are not even on this CD; not forgetting R&S were the first to release in Europe Derrick May’s Innovator with the techno house monster ‘Strings Of The Strings Of Life’ in 1998; track that transcends ‘classic’ (especially with Christian Prommers Drumlesson interpretation this year).

So we’re talking the best of the best, Joey Beltram ‘Energy Flash’, Jaydee’s ‘Plastic Dreams’ and Model 500 (aka Juan Atkins), ‘I Wanna Be There’. Hell included his remix of Human Resource’s ‘massive’ track ‘Dominator’ (on Misch Masch Vol III) but here’s the original “I wanna kiss myself” version.

And you can’t really have R&S without CJ Bolland, his track ‘Camague’ sounds so old skool now it’s almost refreshing! When you talk about CJ Bolland (who’s been working with ‘rock’ band and Sa Ra fans dEUS), his name his name in New Beat period before moving into techno (see the current issue of Slices for a bit of a history lesson). He says “When we were at R&S .. I think we were all having a laugh.. and looking back, none of us knew what the repercussions would have”. And what is has done, of course, is inspire a whole next generation of techno/house/minimal producers, some of the best you can find on the remix CD2 set.

Paul Woolford is a ever present ‘solid’ remixer (recently at large with the mouthfull of a Paul Woolford’s String Theory Remix of Darious Syrossian & Mundyke’s ‘Caspian Man’ - recognise that piano?) and featured on the recent D.Ramirez’s Azuli Presents Headliners album.

Capricorn ‘20 Hz’ the attention of Optimo on a massive batucada mix (see Sub Club 20 Years Underground) where you’ll also find disko kid Prins Thomas, Boyz Noise and Audion (aka Matthew ‘Sound & Vision’ Dear), Herve (how many remixes does this guy do?) and Tom ‘ATT100’ Middleton all on their best behaviour.

Inevitably as R&S Records faded, sooner of later the re-assessment comes around. With an acute sense of what was happening on dancefloors and who were doing it, they proved time and time again they could be both commercially successful and at the cutting edge; with the re-launch there may be even higher pinnacles to be reached?

Reviewed: Various - In Order To Dance (R&S Records Ltd) Cat. No. RS0802CD Release date: 20-10-2008
Track Listing - CD1
1 Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath
2 Golden Girls - Kinetic (Orbital Remix)
3 Jaydee - Plastic Dreams
4 Radical Rob - Monkey Wah
5 Capricorn - 20Hz
6 Joey Beltram - Energy Flash listen
7 Outlander - Vamp listen
8 Human Resource - Dominator
9 Aphex Twin - Didgeridoo
10 Second Phase - Mentasm
11 CJ Bolland - Carmague
12 Model 500 - I Wanna Be There
CD2
1 Outlander - Vamp (Prins Thomas Remix)
2 Capricorn - 20Hz (Optimo Edit)
3 Jaydee - Plastic Dreams (Audion Remix)
4 Sonic Solution - Music (Paul Woolford Remix)
5 Second Phase - Mentasm (Redshape CTX Mix)
6 Human Resource - Dominator (Herve Remix)
7 CJ Bolland - Horsepower (Boyz Noize Remix)
8 Golden Girls - Kinetic (Tom Middleton Remix)

Links
www.rsrecords.com
www.myspace.com/randsrecords
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphex_twin
www.jaydee.net
www.wannakissmyself.com
www.optimo.co.uk
Electronic Beats presents Slices - The Electronic Music Magazine, Issue 3-08 www.eb-slices.net Videos: Bomb The Bass, Jay Haze, Raudive, The Considerate Builders Scheme