Ultramarine - A User's Guide

WRWTFWW Records is honored to reissue revered UK electronic duo Ultramarine’s
best kept secret from their discography, the superb A User’s Guide album, available
as a limited double LP housed in a beautiful heavyweight sleeve with inside out
printing.

On the rare occasions that Ultramarine’s story is told, the duo’s fifth album, 1998’s A
User’s Guide, tends to get omited from the narrative. Radically different to anything
the duo released before or since, it has remained a slept-on, Timeless and inherently
futurist classic ever since.

Unavailable on vinyl since the year it was released – in part because the label it
originally came out on, New Electronica, folded shortly afterwards – A User’s Guide
was the result of a conscious decision by Ultramarine members Paul Hammond and
Ian Cooper to change their working methods and the “sound palete” that
underpinned their work.

Out went the partially improvised hybrid electronic/acoustic sounds and the
collaborations with guest musicians they’d become famous for. They were replaced
by painstakingly created electronic sounds and textures, metallic motifs, spaced-out
chords, rhythms rooted in contemporary techno and drum & bass culture, and nods
aplenty to pioneering music of the period, from the post-rock atmospherics of
Tortoise, and the hazy dub techno of Basic Channel, to the tech-jazz of Detroit, the
minimalism of Berlin, and the musically expansive warmth of Chicago deep house.

It may have taken a year to create – part of which was spent developing this headspinning new sound – but the results were undeniably unearthly and effortlessly
forward-thinking. Over a quarter of a century may have passed since it first appeared
in record stores, but A User’s Guide still sounds fresh and modern – a remarkable
achievement given the relatively sparse and basic equipment used in the making of
the album.

As this first vinyl reissue conclusively proves, the material showcased on A User’s
Guide has lost none of its sparkle in the 26 years that have passed since its release.
For proof, check the head-nodding IDM bubbliness of opener ‘All of a Sudden’, the
queasy, lopsided tech-jazz of ‘Sucker For You’, the locked-in beats and mind-mangling
motifs of ‘Zombie’, the ghostly, out-there electro of ‘Ambush’, the Autechre-esque
‘Ghost Routine’ and the triumphant closing cut ‘What Machines Want’, a classic of
minimalistic, jazz-flecked techno futurism.

Fully remastered from the original DATs by Jason G at Transition Studios, the 2024
vinyl edition of A User’s Guide thrusts Ultramarine’s most overlooked album back into
the spotlight. This WRWTFWW edition also features brand new contextualizing sleeve
notes, complete with new quotes on the production process from Ultramarine, by
dance music historian Mal Anniss (author of Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the
Birth of British Bass Music, and founder of online electronic music platform
Jointhefuture.net)

Tracklist
1. All Of A Sudden 08:37
2. Surfacing 07:23
3. Sucker 4U 05:58
4. On The Brink 07:04
5. Zombie 07:12
6. By Turns 05:43
7. Ambush 09:18
8. 4U Version 03:53
9. Ghost Routine 07:11
10. What Machines Want 10:05

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