ritish electronica maverick Andrew Weatherall has worn many hats in his decade-plus on the international music scene: artist, remixer, producer, label boss, and more. His latest full-length project manages to fit all of those into one CD and then some. Rotters Golf Club Presents Machine Funk Specialists is the first compilation album from Weatherall’s new label (in conjunction with his Two Lone Swordsmen partner-in-grime Keith Tenniswood) following a handful of EPs and a Radioactive Man (Tenniswood’s solo alter ego) full-length, and the results are just as filthily funked-out as the title would lead you to believe.


The majority of the tunes here might easily fall into the category of dancefloor electro, but trust me—no one makes dancefloor electro like Weatherall and Co. Thumping and throbbing programmed beats are shot through with oddly catchy melodies (you can’t hum them, but they stick in your head like a wad of rubber cement, complete with hallucinatory fumes) and noises that sound by turns like massive hoses leaking, giant globs of wet toilet paper being hurled out of the speakers’ bass cones onto your walls, or a molten-lava monster trying to eat your skull from the ears outward. Listen intently and you’re rewarded with an Aphex-esque freakfest of sounds; or simply let the rhythms hit you and shake your ass all over your living room—the choice is yours.


And while this is ostensibly a compilation CD, at least 8 of the 14 tracks here are either Weatherall and Tenniswood themselves (two tracks each by Rude Solo, Klart, and Aramchek—all pseudonyms for the pair), Tenniswood solo in his Radioactive Man guise, or in one case, Tenniswood remixed by Weatherall. In fact, guessing from the lack of songwriting info present, some of the other mysterious names here (Frisch und Munter, the Hold, and the Black Balloons) might very well be the pair in any number of combinations as well. But with results this fresh, you’ll hardly care. Fans of experimental electronica that you can actually dance to (remember what that was like, Autechre fans?) could do worse than to check out the latest action at the Rotters Golf Club.