SuperUser by YEE-KING

Matthew Yee-King has long been a friend of ours, since way before Spymania existed in fact, so it's remarkable that somehow we never released any of his tracks. In truth we probably didn't have a
chance with any of these ones, as the legendary Rephlex label snapped them all up to release this album in 2000. So it's a real honour to have the opportunity to re-release it now, along with some extra bonus material for those who purchase the download.

Over to Matthew himself for some thoughts and reflections on the time and the music:

"I wrote the tracks on this album in a basement flat on Marine Parade in Kemptown, Brighton between 1997 and 1998. I shared the flat with Joe Muggs, James Stephenson and a mysterious chap called Phil.

I remember being in the back room doing tracks all day until I had to go to work in the evenings at the Mongolian barbeque. My room was next to the kitchen. I'd wake up, peel last week's rotten sausages off the grill, make some toast and tea then just sit down and do tracks all day. Sometimes, quite often, I'd go to play and record drums over at Mike and Jonny's place. There are samples of those drums on the record. We were in a funk band with James on bass. That's actually why I came to Brighton - James invited me to join the band to play drums. They had this amazing tour lined up. Playing drums in a touring funk band seemed like a good option after my degree in Genetics and Zoology at Leeds University. The tour turned out to be a 5 nights a week slot in a surf-bar in a dodgy Spanish resort town. We got sacked for drinking too much beer and not playing enough covers.

There were various debauched interludes around Brighton, for example Cristian Vogel and the No-Future crew's Defunkt nights took place in a club just down the road which was an easy stagger home. But apart from all that, I wrote tracks. Jamie Lidell, who also joined the touring funk band upon his arrival in Brighton, lent me his Akai S950. To that I added two Commodore Amigas, a little Spirit Folio mixer, a Roland E20 and a Philips DCC recorder. If you want to recreate my retro late 90's setup - it's cheap.

The tracks on this album were never going to be released. In '98 I refocused on academic study and went back to do a masters at Sussex University. Meanwhile, some later tracks were released by the No-Future crew on their ill fated Trash label (Hello Consume and Mr Million). I made a CD for my late friend Chris Marshall's birthday with all the unreleased tracks on it. He was playing it when Aphex Twin / Richard James came round to his house. Deliberately? I don't know - anyway, thanks Chris; we miss you. Aphex liked the tracks enough to release them on Rephlex. The SuperUser record came out in 2000.

I was really happy when Paul from Spymania contacted me about re-releasing the album. Rephlex went under some years back and there was no digital release available. Not to mention the proceeds are going to a great charity. For this new release, I tried to get as many tracks as I could off the original DCCs. Some would not play unfortunately, and others had actually had quite a few 2 track edits done in a PC, so I left those. Arp played so I captured a WAV of the DCC and remastered it (bit of eq and compression). I think the hihats are a bit crisper and the bass is a bit tighter than the CD. I also got E20 Crunch. For that one, I did a rearrangement with richer chords taken from two different original takes. Hope you like it. I also put a remaster of Sleepy Clown on there which is a bit clearer. I had a look at Goodnight Toby, but if it ain't broke..."

In 1995 a crack commando unit was sent to Brighton by an arbitrary court for an EP they didn't release. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Essex underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a demo, if no-one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire Spymania.

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