Craig Richards – Fabric 01

Re-visiting this more than 20 years later...I can confirm that it still sounds excellent. This mix was ahead of it's time - it took the emerging tech-house formula and gave us a preview of what was to come. The tracks are slow, funky and clean - quite unlike anything at that time. If you told me this was mixed in 2006 - I would believe you.

I prefer this to the Terry Francis effort, as that mix (mostly due to it's tempo), sounds a little dated now.

Fabric 1 starts abruptly, in mid flow. Mid-tempo beats, bits of jazz, glassy background texture. It's more melodic than later Fabric mixes, and at first it's like a headphones or at-home vibe. By the second half it's starting to feel like club music.
A very solid mix, almost sounds like a studio album by a single artist. Not a single weak track here.
Great opening to the series.

The Dub Tech Soundsystem track is actually Mitt I Stan not Sugar Rush.

Listening to this mix without immediate play of Fabric 02 afterwards feels like an incomplete experience. This mix surely is good and flows incredibly well, it has this build up feel however and when it reaches the full speed and tension, it all just stops. That's where Fabric 02 shines and makes sense.

This is up there with the Tyrant mixes. Every track on this mix is a classic...still hammer it today.

This mix came out when tech-house was really starting to move into mainstream attention. Taken as a mix, it is a somewhat fumbled progression, but as a sampler of some of the best tech-house tracks of the time, it is a solid introduction. The standouts are en's perennially impressive Pirate's Life, the two SCSI-9 tracks that highlight the producer's career, and Mispent Years by Schatrax, which not only ends a great selection but also recaptures the sound of Fabric in its early and amazing years.