Various – Frankfurt Trax Volume 4 (The Hall Of Fame)

The exclusive tracks:

M.F.P.A. - Came To Party
Oh, what's that! 20 Fingers / Salt'n'Peppa style dance-rapping with breakbeats and "happy sounds".
Unexpected for p - but not bad at all!

303 Nation - Double Speed Mayhem
Double speed? More like quadruple hyper-speed! Swirling acidcore at several hundred bpm. Wooosh!

Tony G - Loveless
I cannot communicate how much I adore the very few incursions by P into the (dark) world of pop (or at least more traditional) music - and this is one of them.

"Live at Hellraiser" might be the World's Famous edit of Program 1's track, as it was included on another edition of Thunderdome (the one with the dog!)

Rating: 96 / 100

In 1993 like in every other year some of the techno heads lived in the backlands, not in the big cities like Berlin or FFM but in smaller towns between 25 000 - 50 000 citizens.
This group had a much more harder job to do if they want to buy all those real hammer music out there. Not easy going to the shop right on the corner, no internet ordering, no: they had to travel to places/cities where they could buy this hot music shit.
But this people were important to the artists, because they took a real big effort onto themselfes to get the music so they grew into being the real hard techno freak. Often the first release they could buy was the cd-release.
And that has some analogies to my story: I bought this in Gütersloh in winter 1993 during a visit to my brothers and I could find it in a small record shop with a well selected number of records and cds. At this time you could also buy there the first two parts of the original Rotterdam Records Compilations but all this rare releases costs a high amount (around 50 DM each).
The owners of the record shop were a couple (both between 45-50 years old, in this small town that means they were very open minded when selling this styles of new and aggressive music and they both did not look like people selling this stuff. Anyway - they did!)
I already owned the third part of the Frankfurt Trax serial (which I discovered in this small record shop some month before too and after listening to this cd all nights mixed with 12" jewels I had bought via phone ordering from the Hard Wax store in Berlin (yes: in that time you could phone a number and listen to some sound exerpts of new 12" entries - when you liked it you could place an order, again via phone) I was very very committed to that hardcore techno from the streets of Frankfurt and I knew from a small music mag 'CUT' that there would be a release of the 4th part in these days.

The first thing that seperates this compilation from the other compilation stuff outthere were the infos from the artwork of the 8-page booklet: Every artist has an own image (not on every photo was the real artist, if not, then a sometimes humorous placeholder, which in every case could also transport the idea of the track) and some lines of information, written down with love and creativity.
(there is a Belgium cd-version with some other track listing, and if the information here on Discogs is valid there is on cd-format the orig Headshop track 'Universe' but on the double vinly you can find the remix version - the vinyl release comes with 5 less tracks)

All tracks appearing on here are now well known and have been discussed uncounted times except only a very few not so successful tunes but in fact all tracks are high level interesting to understand the FFM/P output history.
So I am not the same opinion with the other reviewer cthulhu303 (reviewing the 2xvinly release) although I respect his view onto this release.
Yes, the famous 'Double Speed Mayhem' is a unique kick in asses and it is like a bomb BUT:
There are a lot of other important examples from the P discography on here: Alien Christs 'Of Suns And Moons (Phase 5)' is a cool breaking chilly dark & ruff FFM kiss, followed by a gang war-declaring track '1 Gun - 2 Gun 3 Gun - Roar!' by the famous Ace The Space alias of Marc Trauner. Then comes 'Universe' by The Viking - isn't it just a legend?
T-Bone Castro track 'Bitches' is the soundtrack to life in the early 90s: No crisis, big & loud & lowered nice cars like MB, BMW or,or and so on, nice and pretty girls and fresh and bold powered techno without being cheesy (for sure last thing depends on the dj ;D ) monotone loud hard techno! And like an evidence for that it followes the M.F.P.A. track MCied by the sexy girls Lucy & Ariane...
And then: White Breaks!!!! Killer breakbeat mega mayhem kickasses the Uk Hardcore from the island - very fat composed: sawtooth waveformed crazy carpet. Track 8: I am the king of Frankfurt, 'King Of FFM' by Nasty Django, a straight stalking echo clap hurricane: simple but effective, like most of Trauners (Arcadipanes) sounds around that years...
303 Nation was already reviewed by cthulhu303, Tony G gives a break with music for the soul, everlasting FFM energy 4 the heart. Turbulence followed with a very hard sub bass build for big PAs, what is Gangster Rap for Hip Hop is Turbulence for techno. The Mover himself comes with a track not from this world. That is the sound people got frightened by P - also the follower: 8 A.M. 'The Fog track' - very mystical and dark sounds. If you are in an unsafe psychic situation don't listen to this - it might could trip you into the dark. Unforgotten.
The next 3 tracks are ABSOLUTE legends and everything is already told about.
The last track is an Hip Hop outro, Trauner s a local project and IMO its ok to be the last track on such a compilation from the streets of FFM...

Absolute must have in every techno collection. 5/5

The flame still burns...

Forget all that fashionable, but questionnable P sound on this and go straight to the only truly worthwhile track: the exclusive Double Speed Mayhem.
303 Nation leave their usual programming style in the closet for it and go tunnel vision for an ultimate track. After spending several minutes trying to compare, my conclusion is that the rotating Acidline sounds like nothing on Earth (frying fish, maybe? some kind of effervescent reaction?), yet it is the said double speed itself that causes the mayhem. Instead of using a hard distorted kickdrum, they used a full-on attack, though neat kick with a bit of reverb and doubled it. The impressive result is this unforgettable track that sounds as if it were played fast forward. Confusion guaranteed.