"Chicago Skyline (Mix I)" Written and produced by Cubanate. From the unreleased album Search Engine (2000). Search Engine playlist: • Cubanate - Search Engi...
A truly ironically named album considering I spent the best part of fourteen years searching for it on the clearnet to no avail. Even after asking Marc Heal and Phil Barry what the hell happened to this abandoned juggernaut I still couldn't get any real answers as to how or where it was leaked since Marc said he had 'junked the files', nor could I find more than a couple of tracks from it uploaded to youtube. Then, all of a sudden, here it is on your channel, and it's everything I had hoped it would be, especially the first mixes of this track and Cold War - which I consider unfinished masterpieces. Razor's Edge is a darkly cynical piece of spoken-word poetry, Superstructure is an abstract noise monster of a track, and Drowning Hands has a wonderful ambivalence in its emotiveness. The only track I don't think hits the mark is the second mix of Chicago Skyline, which loses the perfection of the first because of the different arrangement of its notes. This album was set up to be everything that Cubanate should have evolved into beyond their more youthful, raw-sounding hits like Oxyacetylene from Cyberia and the strange, broody breakbeat turn of tracks like Isolation from Interference. Search Engine takes everything that came before and refines and distils it into a mature conceptual album with delightful existential undertones. It's a real shame that Marc's personal problems imploded the band at the time and that, as Phil told me when I met him outside a PIG gig in 2018, he didn't want to revisit it because the memories were too painful. Having said that, it was somewhat disappointing and ironic to find out that the only really punchy track on their new Kolossus EP is in fact plundered from the rough-sketch that is Infiltrator from Search Engine. As thrilled as I was that they got back together and that I was able to meet and greet them both, I wish I'd been able to see them back in the day when they were at their youthful peak around the time SE was produced. Aging, family life and years spent on other projects have inexorably changed Marc in ways that make me wonder what the future of Cubanate will be now. With that said, I've loved their music since I first heard it on the Gran Turismo soundtrack and always will - the way his mind works speaks to me, just like a search engine. I can't thank you enough for being the one to finally bring this album to the light of day from whatever deep web vault you pulled it from.
These files actually didn't come from the web. They were shared with me by an inside source over ten years ago. I kept the files private in case Marc decided to release them but once he decided that he wasn't going to use the tracks anymore (as he indicated to you as well) I decided to preserve the files here.
@@rareelectronic I can appreciate that. I asked Phil if he was ok with me uploading my live footage of Vortex and Kolossus from the 2018 Cubanate gig in Angel, Islington (see on my channel) and he said no, so I sat on it for nine months until the EP dropped, but ten years? Goddamn that's a long time. It's sort of bittersweet because as glad as I am that you held onto and eventually released it, I would have loved to see him finish the album and play some of its hits live. Maybe it's just the uber-fan in me but I'll never fully understand why he would abandon his magnum opus, it seems like a terrible waste of brilliance. I'd love to be able to make music generally, let alone something as unique and sublime as Search Engine.
Dude this is amazing. Admittedly I only got into Cubanate in 2009 but once I did I was looking all over for this and never found it and I dug deep. I'm glad me and others got to hear this stuff after all and in such high quality no less. Awesome move from you to upload them.
