The Comedy of Errors: Leo Anibaldi - Raiders of the Future (29 May 1992)

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If you can listen to the whispers that bookend this piece of Italian electro techno without wanting to buy a SEAT, you’re doing better than me.

There is a little bit of confusion over the name of this track.  Peel explained that, “depending on which part of the label you look at”, this is either Raiders of the Future or it could possibly be a misprint and it should be the title track of the 12-inch on which it can be found, The Riders of the Future.  We have no clue of knowing whether Anibaldi was being obtuse with the titling or whether the record label, ACV, had problems with the typesetting at the pressing plant.  We’ll stick with Raiders though.

With a title like Raiders of the Future, you might expect something swashbuckling and futuristic - a space opera set to 136bpm, perhaps?  It doesn’t quite materialise here, I’m afraid.  Instead, we get a bit more of a bleeps ‘n’ beats stew.  The kind of thing that I might pass on, and indeed have on a number of previous Peel shows, but for some reason, I’m drawn to this example.  It could be the sound of molten raindrops falling from a gutter which underpins the whole thing.  But I expect it’s a subtle admiration for Anibaldi starting his musical experiments in the late 1980s by playing around on a Commodore 64 computer.  I had one of those, but I never thought of making music on it, despite the fact that the package mine came with included a piano keyboard mould which could be placed over the top of the computer and on which you could play piano by loading a cassette which allowed you to convert the computer to a music maker.  But I had neither the patience or inquisitiveness for this and limited myself to playing games - my package also  included a copy of  the computer game of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 as well as the book of The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.  Given that it was 1986, they also threw in a copy of Rambo: First Blood Part II. With the chance to be Mole or Rambo, how could a piano keyboard mould hope to compete with that?  But Leo Anibaldi didn’t want to be Sylvester Stallone, and within a decade of first playing with that piano mould and loading that tape - I think there was an instruction book as well, which was far too tedious for me to bother with when there were pixilated Viet Cong to fight - he was releasing his first album, Cannibald - The Virtual Language which come to think of it, sounds like something which should have been included in my Commodore 64 package as well.

Video courtesy of Old Skool Wax