RiL076 - inner city - ahnongay
/I’ve always felt attached to the Detroit band Inner City, ever since first hearing their era defining hits ‘Good Life’ and ‘Big Fun’ on the radio when I was first getting into the new sounds of techno music in the late 80s. They are still their best known works even after all these years but I have since found several other key tracks that lasted longer in my record box. I suppose it’s partly the fact that DJs love to find less played out, rarer records but also because I have always tended to like deeper cuts. So there are actually quite a few other Inner City records that became firm favourites during my residency at back to basics in the mid 90s and ‘Ahnongay’ is the first to feature on RiL.
It came out as a 10” bronze coloured vinyl disc on 6 x 6 records in 1994. It is far deeper than other Inner City tracks and possibly the first to feature the trademark Reese Project synths that became the hall mark of the great Detroit techno producer, Kevin Saunderson. The vocal is very strange indeed, apparently it is a backwards recording and there is talk of a hidden message in the record. I don’t think it actually means anything played forwards but just sounds phonetically like ‘Ahnongay’. At the time I just thought it said ‘Anarchy’, which is was another reason it was so perfect for back to basics as promoter Dave Beer had always identified with the early punk scene. Anyway it’s got just the right amount of mystery, obscurity and pure brilliance to make it a Records I Love...