Playlist Ghosts: I have played the four tracks from D-Generation’s first (only?) EP a handful of times. I have heard them far, far more often. There they were again when I scrolled down a folder of MP3s this morning – this is the fourth computer they’ve followed me to, lingering spectres in the data. Never burned, rarely selected, but always lurking in the random access, dumped without thinking onto CD-Rs when obsolescence or job changes strike a PC and turn me nomadic.
Do I like them? Not unreservedly. But I’ve grown fond of them. I downloaded them because I remembered some long-ago Simon Reynolds review, hailing D Generation as – in concept at least – an infection of rave by punk (that chestnut not being quite so old at the time). They weren’t. They made drab tracks that you couldn’t dance to, that lasted too long: they sampled Johnny Rotten’s malignant chuckle on one song but their “no future” lift was from a Doctor Who episode – “You are eroding structure, generating entropy!”. That was their thing – entropy: the vibe of the rave turned sluggish and weak, all energy turning to waste. They remind me a little now of DJ Spooky and his academic beat tundras – morose drifts of sound, taking you nowhere and then telling you that was the point.
But still there was something effective about them: an atmosphere, a flicker of intrigue. Hear it yourself on “Rotting Hill” – their most accessible track, perhaps their corniest. But don’t play it. Just leave it in some folder somewhere, or on your iPod: turn it into a gaunt guest in the kitchen of your digital party, waiting to mutter something uneasy into your passing ear.
(The download is 6 MB, dial-up users be aware.)