Altern 8 – The Vertigo EP

Infiltrate 202 is one of the best breakbeats out there. Just great stuff.

"The 1st of May" is such an understated little tune! It's the perfect blend of '91 sounds, with kicking drums, a sweet acid bassline and plenty of bleeps - not to mention those lovely chords in the background. To be honest, I had no idea it's the wrong speed on this pressing, and the "correct" version actually sounds wrong to me now! (I knew something was up with "Real Time Status" though)

Honestly - I believe the misspress is a very cool artifact - especially due to it being vinyl. Not to mention - this is the ONLY version of this SILVER record - take it or leave it. I only have a couple other records that were pressed at wrong speed and I love 'em specifically for that flaw. That said - the B-side is a 33 1/3 speed side and speeding up a record with only 2 cuts on it is not a bad thing and actually makes it sound louder (like how 45 RPM is louder than 33) - therefore, the only loss is that you can only speed it up so much (say - on a technics). That said, as a US raver in Los Angeles - this was still a great find at the store and I gladly bought it - not knowing the B-side was slow - and never cared :) It's an exclusive "version" :) Big ups Mark!

If this was a limited edition, why is it everyone I knew had a copy ?? Great marketing probably.

absolute must have rave classic, even if this EP was not well mastered or pressed, the silver vinyl makes for some surface noise

Just got a copy of this. I thought side B sounded odd!

Yes my copy is also the miss pressed one that plays the b-side at an odd speed.

Does anyone else have a problem pressing of this record with the pitch/tempo incorrect? On my copy (it's silver vinyl) the 2 tracks on side B run at about 116bpm where they should be about 125bpm. this seems to be about equivalent of -8 on a standard Technics deck. I have the CD single and this is about 9bpm faster for "Real Time Status". My decks are tweaked so it's about +4 on my Technics to match the CD tempo. Also the BPMs given by James Hamilton in his Record Mirror reviews at the time were around the 124-125bpm mark.

Famously every single part of this record was a sample from somewhere else (the sampling kings subtitled their first EP "can you steal it?" as a subheader). The "come with me, tonight's the night, can't you see I wanna be with you" was heavily used around this time by other artists and the Archer/Peat combo were unashamed masters of taking elements of other people's tunes and making them their own.