Ash: “Well, I was going through a big pile of Levi’s from the early 90s–2000s and I found a MiniDisc in the back pocket of these jeans.”

“Yeah, they were a pair of Levi’s Engineered—the most important denim of all time.”

‍

On that long-forgotten disc? Fragments of sonic memory interwoven with banging beats in the unmistakable style of a certain blackjack-loving French house label. Think late-‘90s Roulé-style grooves, bright, playful, hands in the air minimal house. 

Barney: “Yeah, that’s right. The jeans belonged to a Christian televangelist who used to be a mad partygoer in the late nineties and early two-thousands. He may or may not have made music himself. There was some great music on this and we thought it needed to be released.”

Ash: “So we decided to roll the dice and tempt fate by pressing these lost relics of dubious origin to vinyl.”

‍

The MiniDisc—now sadly obsolete—was ahead of its time. A compact time capsule from the tech dreamscape of Y2K culture.

‍“It’s undoubtedly one of the most important formats in musical history,” Ash explains, “being the format of choice of Neo in The Matrix, leading him to meet Trinity for the first time, down the basement stairs on William St into Club 77.”

‍

Now, it’s only fitting that this next archival gem—Alters by BITT—will be shared with the world this Saturday in that very same basement at Club 77, opening a portal to an alternate musical timeline.

Barney: “I actually went to 77 on NYE on the Y2K crossover from 1999–2000. That was the first time I ever went to Club 77. But the guy who owned all the jeans wasn’t there because it was a funk, disco night, and he didn’t like funk or disco. He liked French house and banging electro, so he wasn’t present.”

‍

How did this music end up in Australia?

Barney: “He was influenced by the French house records of Roulé. Back in the late ‘90s, you could buy them at HMV on Pitt St and this guy had some of these records with HMV stickers on them—they cost $14.95 in 1998.”

‍

There’s a ghost in the groove of Alters. Maybe it’s the spirit of the ex-party boy turned preacher. Maybe it’s just really, really good French-inspired house. Either way, it demanded to be heard again.

‍

‍‍This Saturday at Club 77, Alters will be launched in the exact place where Barney first encountered the music that shaped him. Expect a wild night of French house energy, lost formats, and spoken word mischief.

Barney: “We’ll be carrying on the conversation at 77 on Saturday, I’m going to be on the mic and I’ll be waffling a bit.”

Ash: “After we did the thing on Gallery Recs, with Barney’s iconic spoken word vocal—‘It’s flat out like a lizard’ (Mt. Panorama)—we performed this with a mic at Subsonic and the energy was huge.”

‍

BITT – Alters available to preorder on vinyl.