Ive been surprised to learn in the past few years that different people have different touchstones with this record; for most its the mix of 6 Underground which was inescapable in 1996, for DJs and house heads its Spin Spin Sugar (the dark garage mix is one of s greatest remixes). For me its actually the title track, which I randomly found on a Napster trip-hop deep dive 20 years ago. Surprisingly, for such a cool and big record, its always been hard to find on wax ( must be focusing their resources on keeping s catalog in print, for which were eternally grateful). started out as a duo recording instrumental trip-hop but decided they wanted to incorporate vocals for their debut album, and Kelli Dayton was recruited afterthey spotted her singing in a pub. She was kicked out of the band after this record because the other blokes stupidly thought they could handle the vocals themselves (*Julia Roberts voice* big mistake huge!). The overall production will be familiar to anyone versed in the sounds of Cool Britannia, but taken as a set of 11 distinct pop songs, Becoming X rises above all the other moody fondue music of the time as perfectly-distilled pop - this could easily be a -produced album. In addition to the aforementioned big tracks, check out Post-Modern Sleaze, Portishead-by-numbers Walking Zero and the more textural pieces like Waterbaby and How Do. Black double vinyl pressing with glossy printed inner sleeves, full album lyrics and liner notes.
**It should be noted that this pressing is not entirely faithful to the original incarnation of the album - it contains the more well-known remix versions of 6 Underground, Becoming X, Spin Spin Sugar and Post-Modern Sleaze as opposed to the original album versions; check the audio tab for samples.
- double vinyl pressing
- glossy printed inner sleeves
- record labels read 33rpm but pressing actually cut at 45rpm
- music label:One Little Indian 2019
