I first heard LFO’s self-titled debut single in September 1990, in the DJ booth at my first-ever club gig. One of the managers of the club—Leah Hunter, a big hip-hop fan who had a soft spot for some deep house records—brought a white label copy into the booth before my set started and told me to give it a listen. I dug what I heard, already having a bit of Detroit techno in my crate and figuring it would mix well with Model 500 and the like. I also wanted to get off on the right foot, and so I told her I would be happy to drop it into my set.

Peak time hit a few hours later and I took a chance on “LFO,” thinking as I cued the record that the Speak and Spell vocals would likely hook the crowd if the beat didn’t, and the low-end rumbles would sound amazing through the club’s giant system. Sure enough, the snapping snare and swerving, bleeping riff went down a treat, as did the ridiculous bass groove, sounding absolutely mammoth as I tweaked my EQ to accentuate the richness. But then a funny thing happened a little less than a minute in, at the point in the song where the bass riff drops another (I’m guessing here) three octaves or so and solos on its own for a few seconds. DOOM DOOM DOOMDOOM. DOODOODOODOOOM.

The speakers went silent.

The crowd thought I did it and I thought the needles skipped, but when the riff appeared again a few minutes later, I figured out what happened—the bass overloaded the club’s system and it just cut out altogether. They never even heard it. Being as how no one in the room except Leah and I knew what happened, it didn’t really cause much of a ruckus. After I calmed down a bit and realized that I wasn’t going to be on the hook for blowing out the club’s speakers, I relaxed and the rest of the set was smooth as glass.

“LFO” opened my eyes that night—it taught me a lesson about sound and the power and the fury of it all, about the things you could do with mixing and EQ and production that I literally had never considered. It was a revolution in my head, and based on the way Warp took off after “LFO” became a hit, I’d say I wasn’t the only one who felt it.

A few months later, when I purchased the Tommy Boy domestic release of the single, it came with a warning on the back: “Tommy Boy Music, Inc., its affiliates and licensees disclaim any and all liability for speaker damage resulting from the playback of this sound recording.” Amen.

Warp / WAP 5
[Todd Hutlock]