As Space Dimension Controller, Jack Hammill earned accolades from the underground dance music scene during the early 2010s through several singles and album-length double EPs that creatively reimagined house, spacy techno, and electro. Following his official debut full-length for R&S, 2013's over-the-top electro-funk concept album Welcome to Mikrosector-50, as well as a few singles on the Royal Oak label, he signed to Ninja Tune. Surprisingly enough, his first release for the label wasn't a new recording, but a previously unreleased album dating back to 2008, before Hammill had adopted the SDC moniker. At this point, he was still a teenager and making experimental ambient music under the name RL/VL for ambient label Hidden Shoal and IDM netlabel Acroplane Recordings. The tracks on Orange Melamine are a far cry from his later club-friendly releases. Most noticeably, they're extremely lo-fi, captured on cassette tapes in Hammill's bedroom. The crunchy beats are clearly under the influence of Boards of Canada, but they're much more restless and twitchy, often reversing and glitching out at warp speed. It gets pretty sloppy, but it's charming to hear him mash beats up in such a manner; it's clear that he made these recordings for no other purpose than to amuse himself. Behind the broken rhythms, there are also numerous samples from old VHS tapes of '80s and '90s sci-fi movies and Saturday morning cartoons, and the synth melodies and ambient atmospheres sound like they could've come straight from any of these video tapes. There are a few instances where the tempos slow down, coming close to wonky hip-hop on the vocoder-laced "Scollege Campus" or illbient on "Multipass." Other tracks are high-speed action capers, such as the exhilarating "Gullfire." Final cut "Velvet Gentleman" blends Satie-esque pianos with high-speed electro, and somehow it works beautifully. Orange Melamine is a very curious choice for a first release on such a well-known label, but it shows that Hammill has always possessed a unique vision. The recording would sound out of time no matter when it was released, so it makes a strange sort of sense that it would be released this far into Space Dimension Controller's career.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo