( HOUDINI 1 ) HOUDINI - Strange (12") Houdini France

French producer Houdini (Simon Peter Ellis) might be toutable as merely a trance producer on the surface, but the reality is that he's much more of a weirdo than our genre tags make him out to be. The name of the 'Strange' EP suggests that it is, well, just that. With these tracks released in and around 1994 on the infamous Fax label run by the late great Pete Namlook, they're as mad as hatters, barely clinging on to their status as trance numbers before indulging some of the oddest tricks and presets in the book. The humourously-named 'Don't Know Really' and the organified 'Beyond Recognition', for example, are essentially house numbers, but in their indeterminate moodwork and jarringly in-betweeny palette, it's really up to you as to how to categorize them in the end.