3. Sun Ra
I was into early Mo’ Wax and loved the U.N.K.L.E. EP, The Time Has Come. A lot of trip-hop has aged quite badly, but there were elements of the early Mo’ Wax stuff that work really well. At the time I was totally in love with it. There are crossroads between breaks, hip-hop and early electronic experimentation with sort of dubbed-out influences… some of it stands up really well.
It was only later on that I tracked down the sample from ‘If You Find Earth Boring’ off that release to Sun Ra’s ‘Twin Stars Of Thence’ and was introduced to the madness. It’s almost like a funk track… When you listen to this and then move on to other Sun Ra stuff, you realise how completely crazy it is! I still don’t know whether I really enjoy lots of Sun Ra but it was definitely essential in my formative years. This is actually a relatively easy listening Sun Ra track; repetitive and more traditionally melodic. It served as a good gateway into his world (or universe) before listening to Heliocentric Worlds. As the only human to have travelled to Saturn, Sun Ra definitely deserves a place on the list.
