As night clubs go, London's the End is never going to make it up there with the glittering cokey-dusty likes of the Paradise Garage, Studio 54, or such amyl holes as the Tunnel or Sound Factory. Nevertheless, to a tightly passworded clique, the End is one of the few clubs that can boast the birth of a genre. One Saturday a month, the End hosts Subterrain, a techno-house night, promoted and lorded over by erstwhile Shaman, Mr. C.

Okay, we all recall the Shamen's Cockney Sparrah "knees-up-Muvvah-Brarhnn" techno-pop vom that was "Ebeneezer Goode"-- a novelty record that horrifically besmirched the band's previous immaculate, if underselling, back catalog. Though we all pretty much blame Mr. C for that cack, we shouldn't immediately dismiss him as some terrifying dismantler, a nemesis live and direct from cracked vellum pages of a medieval bestiary. No, before he ruined the band that was the perfect amalgam of acid house and neo-psychedelia indie rock, Mr. C was a huge player in the London techno scene and probably one of the people without whom Primal Scream would still be peddling their jangly fringed arpeggiated pop.

For as one of the residents of South East London's the Clink club, Mr C encouraged dark tunes of monstrous techno that flipped the beatific Balearic vibe on its smiley carapace and probed its chemical innards for potent venomous sounds. That the Clink was, as its name suggests, a former prison adds further credence to the legends that clubbers, cabbaged by the venue's prescription-only music, promulgated. The Clink eventually closed its doors, but its vicious infection had longed since passed into the cultural genome. Dark tunes soon took over the nascent hardcore scene and gave Nico and the rest of the No U Turn massive a reason to act evil.

In 1995, Mr C, with his long time partner in slime, Layo Paskin, moved operations to the End and established Subterrain. Originally loosely conceived as just another techno club, the open design of the clubbing space accidently promoted a fusing of the main room's techno with the house booming out from the secondary chamber. And the kids enjoyed this soundclash. From then on, Mr. C and the resident DJs provided housed-up techno and birthed the tech-house hybrid.

Though tech-house is never going to be the next mega-compilation-selling trance (hoover-heavy, tweakin' hard house will be), it has some notable practitioners. The duos known as Circulation and Get Fucked have both released exemplary tech-house, while Peace Division and Bushwacka! are repeatedly collared for techy remixes.

Since this somewhat throwaway style is not gay enough for the mainstream (how about that for a paradox?), it appeals to both the techno trainspotters (your average Jeff Mills fanatic) and those house heads for whom hard house's 150bpm tempos are just too slamming, and who don't buy into the Jazz FM/Joey Negro nu-disco movement.

So how fitting it is that the club that spawned this bouncy chimera should cash in. Charles Webster, the brain behind Presence's All Systems Gone opens the set with a none-too-adept mish-mash of Spanish guitars, deep house beats-n-bass and some token industrial clanks and whirs. This, by the way, is very bad tech-house and should not be taken as an example of the hybrid. Chicago house-master Derrick Carter, happily makes us forget the awkward Webster track by offering "My Tiger is Ravenous" under his Tone Theory moniker. The Roland 303 squelch and the high hats fizzle with nanoprobe intensity.

Mr. C deftly follows Carter's cybernetic romp with Gene Farris' (another Chicago convert!) "I Can't Stop Dancing," which just lives for the artery-bursting snares that only the Roland 909 can produce. Layo and Bushwacka! introduce a boisterous bunch of breakbeats for some extracurricular tooling around, and name their cranked-up sound "Kipping." Get Fucked's Nathan Coles teases old-skool hip-hoppers with "Plip Plop You Don't Pop" and manages to reference both the Sugarhill Gang and Mr. C's old label, Plink Plonk, at the same time.

Mr C's "Electronische" more than makes reparation for his "Ebeneezer" past with its Neu!-ische atmospherics and strapping bass line. I can't help but be caught in the inescapable undertow of the transition from Impossible Beings' "Special Brew Chic" to James Barth's (in reality Swedish techno master Cari Lekebusch) "For the Lords." "High quality gear" is the echoing cheer!

The lone problem I have with this disc is that it moves too fast. Mr. C's mixing allows us to hear only four minutes or so of each of the 16 tracks before distractingly slipping into the next track. What I love about tech-house is the extended groove and how I can snuggle right down in it and feel my biorhythms adjusting their bpms to the groove. Four minutes isn't long enough for me to get deep in it. Fortunately, for me and those like me, this set is available as four vinyl EPs. If that's not so appealing and you still want it deeper, order a copy of Richard Harvey's User compilation or Circulation's double-disc set, Colours, and save Subterrain 100% Unreleased for nocturnal highway journeys, Sunday afternoon ironing, or wistful reminiscences about legendary clubs of yesteryear.

-Paul Cooper