Elektrabel - Elektrabel EP Album

Mind bending record. The story of how I got hold of a white label copy is pretty out there too. For as long as I had been partying in London, there always seemed to be a Lost party on or around my birthday, which is at the end of February. On the odd occasion Jeff Mills would turn up at a club that I was going to if it wasn't Lost, such as the last weekend in February 1997 where he filled in for an absent Billy Nasty (who's wife was having a baby) at Voyager, at the Complex in Islington - we only found out upon arrival at the club, and with all due respect to Billy Nasty, we were thrilled, and Mills absolutely destroyed the place. I still have the set times sheet that Universe used to produce at time, signed by Mills and wishing me a happy birthday.Fast forward to February 2003, at Lost, at the Lighthouse in London docklands, and there we were again; me, an enormous crew of likeminded party attendees, and Jeff Mills on the bill. I was probably a bit worse for wear (but used to carry it off quite well) when I bumped into Mills on the middle of the dancefloor. He had someone helping him with his record boxes - it may have been Steve Bicknell, it may not - and I think that it's possible that Jeff recognised my face as one of those trainspotter / watch his every DJ move types that exist globally. Some rambled conversation that probably went along the lines of "you always play in London when it's my birthday" and he opens his record box and starts digging through it. He then pulls out this record, hands it to me - "happy birthday" and off he goes with his box which is almost half the size that he is.WTF? Jeff Mills has just given me a white label? I wasn't sure if I had hallucinated what had just played out but sure enough, the record was in my hand. I cradled it lovingly all night (how it got out of there in once piece is a mystery), and it was subsequently aired at an afterparty on a housing estate in Bow, East London. It blew our minds; this, as I said right at the start of this "review" is a mind bending record, after all.As an aside, this was probably Elektrabel's peak, and it was only his second release. I DJ'd after he played a live set in Prague a couple of years later and he never seemed to capture the raw, pure essence of techno that he did on this record. Funnily enough, one of the photos on the artist page is from the gig we played at. Small world.

this is an amazing story! looks like Jeff is human after all. thanks for sharing the insight and happy (belated) birthday!