Due to Shock's nature as a distributors for a fair number of local and foreign indie labels, as well as having a roster of their own, you can pretty much say that all the content on this three CD compilation is indie in the true sense of the word, without the wank that you sometimes get from the likes of Matador. Though again, that's largely because Shock is a more broad spectrum distributor. And of course they've have had some great stuff to pass on. With three and a half hours of music, it'd be silly attempting to detail all the selections, but here's a overview. There's a lot of the great obvious inclusions, some of which will have you go... "hang on, I remember that!", with a few googlies thrown in.

Disc one is largely straightforward guitar pop - You Am I, Screamfeeder, err, TISM, as well as a Dirty Three track (which is typically great), Primal Scream's "Loaded" (from back when Creation weren't an appendage of Sony) and a rather dull ten-minute house track by Love Corporation to conclude it.

Disc two rather neatly tops and tails a less cranksome running order (juxtaposing Dead Can Dance and the Cocteau Twins at one point, good lord) with two of the most irritatingly cranksome songs of the nineties - in a good way, of course - The Breeders' "Cannonball" and Hocus Pocus' "Here's Johnny" (which still gets flogged down at the local meat market betwixt Outkast and the Chemical Brothers). Genius.

Disc three is quite heavy indeed, starting off quite surly-hypo-teenager with the usual suspects, Frenzal Rhomb, Pennywise and Bodyjar. When the likes of Polly Jean and Adalita turn up to break up the testosterone, the thing is they sound even heavier. It cools down with Spiderbait's "Run", as penned by that famous ornithologist Bill Oddie, and the inevitable "Don't Call Me Dude" by Scatterbrain, which was one of the few songs that everyone in my high school "got".

I know I'm going to be dragging this set out at barbies in ten years time, that thought is both reassuring and bloody scary.