Ultramarine - A User's Guide LP

Reissue of revered UK electronic duo Ultramarine's best-kept secret from their discography, the superb A User's Guide album, available as a limited double LP housed in a beautiful heavyweight sleeve with inside-out printing.

On the rare occasions that Ultramarine's story is told, the duo's fifth album, 1998's A User's Guide, tends to get omitted from the narrative. Radically different from anything the duo released before or since, it has remained a slept-on, timeless, and inherently futurist classic ever since.

Unavailable on vinyl since the year it was released – in part because the label it originally came out on, New Electronica, folded shortly afterwards – A User's Guide was the result of a conscious decision by Ultramarine members Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper to change their working methods and the "sound palette" that underpinned their work.

Out went the partially improvised hybrid electronic/acoustic sounds and the collaborations with guest musicians they'd become famous for. They were replaced by painstakingly created electronic sounds and textures, metallic motifs, spaced-out chords, rhythms rooted in contemporary techno and drum & bass culture, and nods aplenty to pioneering music of the period.

Over a quarter of a century may have passed since it first appeared in record stores, but A User's Guide still sounds fresh and modern – a remarkable achievement given the relatively sparse and basic equipment used in the making of the album.

As this first vinyl reissue conclusively proves, the material showcased on A User's Guide has lost none of its sparkle in the 26 years that have passed since its release. For proof, check the head-nodding IDM bubbliness of opener "All of a Sudden," the queasy, lopsided tech-jazz of "Sucker For You," the locked-in beats and mind-mangling motifs of "Zombie," the ghostly, out-there electro of "Ambush," the Autechre-esque "Ghost Routine," and the triumphant closing cut "What Machines Want," a classic of minimalistic, jazz-flecked techno futurism.

Fully remastered from the original DATs by Jason G at Transition Studios, the 2024 vinyl edition of A User's Guide thrusts Ultramarine's most overlooked album back into the spotlight. This WRWTFWW edition also features brand new contextualizing sleeve notes, complete with new quotes on the production process from Ultramarine, by dance music historian Matt Anniss (author of Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music, and founder of online electronic music platform Jointhefuture.net).