Pressure of Speech

Mickey Mann is best known for his production and engineering work for one of the rave movement's first and biggest pop throw-ups, the Shamen. Originally a psychiatric nurse (he worked in the same hospital with the Shamen's Colin Angus and Will Sin, and actually introduced the two), he formed his own group, Pressure of Speech, in 1993 along with partners DJ Stika (a DJ with London's Spiral Tribe) and Luke Losey (a lighting engineer for the KLF, the Orb, and Curve, among others). The name derives from a psychological affliction characterized by manic and extreme ranting, an apt if hyperbolic description of PoS' penchant for musical information overload. The group were signed by another of Mann's long-standing affiliations, Orbital's Internal label (Mann is Orbital's live sound engineer and co-produced their Brown Album), after being featured on Planet Dog's notable Feed Your Head compilation. PoS combine the rhythmic elements of Detroit and U.K. techno with evocative, sometimes gloomy atmospherics, and, like Orbital, have been known to pepper their otherwise dancefloor/chill room-straddling tracks with overt political and social commentary (as evidenced by album and track titles such as Art of the State and "Assume Nothing"). The group were given their first serious Stateside exposure via Hypnotic Records, who licensed several of the group's tracks, as well as remixes by the likes of Higher Intelligence Agency and Vapourspace, for compiling onto the U.S.-only EP Phase 1. ~ Sean Cooper, All Music Guide