Over 30 years since acid house’s summer of love and there are few of 1988’s cast of actors still left standing. In fact, there’s arguably only one candidate left in the UK. While his peers are content with revival parties and classical house nights at the Albert Hall, Andy Meecham is out on his own as one of the few whose gleaming analogue machines are still pointing towards an imagined future. Having been a founding member of both Bizarre Inc. & Chicken Lips with long-time conspirator Dean Meredith, as the Emperor Machine, Meecham’s solo project since 2003, he has been wrenching monumental basslines, strange keyboard figures & luminescent rhythms from his beloved synthesisers. Inspired by everything from sci-fi movies & KPM library albums. In some ways, his mission has scarcely altered in the 35 years since he first heard ‘Planet Rock’ in the 1980s. “That’s the thing that got me hooked,” he recalls. “The fact that it was futuristic sounding. Anything that was sci-fi: UFO’s, Dr Who, Star Trek. Stuff that suggested the future.” As with most of the Emperor Machine music, the methodology goes against the grain of how most electronic musicians approach producing. Rather than reducing it to blocks of music on a computer screen, Emperor Machine is about long passes, played live & then edited down by a crack team of highly-trained Potteries-based orang-utans, lorded over by merciless taskmaster Meecham. A shudder & a tingle. And maybe a monster bassline. Emperor Machine redux.