During the period of 1992 – 1995 i spent a lot of my spare weekends, and most of my money visiting London, purely to buy records. To me, as a young up & coming DJ back then, getting friendly with the guys in the best shops around the UK meant getting the best upfront music held over for you, and therefore standing out from those DJs who just shopped in Virgin. It also taught me so much about how to run record shops. Some of the main inspiration for my own shops came from these legendary institutions.
I was heavily into Jungle and early breakbeat hardcore back then and my first ever mixtapes that i would sell at the raves were all filled with tunes i got in London, from labels such as Reinforced, Moving Shadow, Metalheadz, Basement, Formation etc…tunes that i still own a heap of to this day and are worth an absolute fortune now.
I bought this particular album out of one of my favourite record shops in the world, Black Market Records in Soho. When you walked into the shop, there was a door at the back of the store that lead you down a very narrow stairway into the basement, where the Drum & Bass / Jungle was housed, this was just the coolest place in the world to me. This shop was like the holy grail of all things upfront. Everything Nicky behind the counter recommended must be brilliant, so it was purchased.
So, Timeless to me, setting aside that it is THE absolute essential underground breakbeat album of the 90’s, is more about riding off the back of the peak of the early part of my DJ career. This was one of the first electronic long players that i bought and appreciated as an absolute journey and ironically i still believe this to be ‘Timeless’ as in locked in a period and not affected by the passing of time or changes in fashion.
Have been listening to this album a lot again lately and i think as i mature it actually means so much more to me as a stamp in my own personal music timeline.
This is just a stunning album to me.