4. Street Sounds Electro 3
This also came out in 1984. Electro was a brand new form of music – it sounded like nothing else to me. I knew ‘Planet Rock’ was inspired by Kraftwerk, but this stuff was so much more thrilling, hard as a cue ball, really crisp and entirely futuristic. I thought the sleeves were beautiful too, very simple graphics considering it was the high eighties. Morgan Khan’s Street Sounds compilations were the best way to buy this stuff. It wasn’t written about anywhere, aside from one issue of The Face I remember. Hip hop wasn’t really used as a phrase back then, at least not in the way we understand it now – it was tied to beat boxes and electronica, rap was part of this future music. What was on this one? ‘King Of The Beat’ by Pumpkin, relentless! ‘We Come To Rock’ by the Imperial Brothers, which was from the same production team as Hashim’s ‘Al Naafiysh’ – it had so much space in it. Import 12"s were £4.99 each, and that was if you could find them. Nowhere in Croydon had them, I had to venture out to Sydenham where I found a few bits. Looking back, I realise there simply weren’t many electro records being made. Street Sounds really did a great job.
