The 'Live At The I.C.A.' set, also known as 'Home Taping', was recorded in 2000, at the Institute Of Contemporary Arts in London. It was a regular, weekly club night held by Sneaker Pimps, where they would ask famous people to make mix-tapes on cassette and the band would play them on the night. This set is their most famous gig, featuring covers from David Bowie to Bjork. Upon release, it was forced down to an MP3 bitrate of 160KBPS. The set sounds very good, it was recorded by cassette, but there's no distortion or tape damage. All album art, including the one pictured is unofficial. Liam Howe speaks about this set: 'Some time ago, whilst rummaging around the Sneaker Pimps storage cage, I came across a box of old DAT tapes and tape reels. Not a band heavy on nostalgia, my first response was to discard them (if they hadn't seen the light of day by now they shouldn't). But the archivist in me put the lid back on the bin and I took them home where they have sat in a cupboard until now. It dawned on me that although uninteresting to the band (as they are essentially outtakes, forgotten remixes and bootleg recordings of live shows), they offer a certain insight to the Sneaker fan and help to describe the wider picture of that period as a complement to the official releases. The first tape is the bootleg recording of the electronic covers set at 'Home Taping' at the I.C.A. This is the first time I have listened to this since we performed it back in 2000. I am, in general, against live recordings and I have agreed to release this, slightly against my better judgement. For me, live music should stay live; the memory of the event is often more precious than its reality. This is no exception on a musical or technical level. My memory of the night is much rosier (I couldn't remember playing duff notes or the pops and crackles). Nevertheless I do believe it was an important moment and I am willing to overlook its infirmities, as it gives a rare insight into another side of Sneaker Pimps. 'Home Taping' was a club night that we organised around the release of 'Splinter', in 1999. It was held monthly at the Institute Of Contemporary Art on the Mall in London (next to the Queen's house). As we all grew up in the 80's, we were very aware of the term 'Home Taping' (the practice of taping records or radio onto a compact cassette at home). The music industry, which before the advent of the cassette recorder hadn't suffered any significant piracy, suddenly panicked and thought record sales would plummet due to the popularity of the humble cassette. They began a campaign to dissuade kids from copying music, its slogan: ''Home Taping is killing music'', its logo: a cassette perched on a pair of crossed bones (as in skull and cross bones). Their worries were differed by the compact disc, as everyone ditched their cassettes and CD's were, for at least for 14 years, not domestically recordable. Of course, the crises is on a grander scale with the MP3, but little did we know this at the time as file sharing was a fraction of what it has become and the iPod was merely a glint in Apple's eye. The reason why we loved home taping as a pass time was because it was the way that we used to learn about music. Amongst friends we would regularly traffic home mix tapes, sometimes attempting to out do the other, sometimes just wanting to cheer someone up, other times to remind friends about who we are and where we've been; a kind of musical conversation. Not surprisingly this practice was not exclusive to us and it seemed that everyone who loved music had tapes that they had made or had been given to them which were totally formative in their musical and cultural development. Joe and I still send tapes to each other now and again. The concept of the night was to invite people (famous and not famous) to send in their tapes and we would simply play them back-to-back on a single cassette deck (absolutely no mixing whatsoever). Along side the music, we would show the images that they sent in (sometimes just a mug shot, other times specific artwork). As we never edited the tapes, we would often get quite horrific results. Gary Barlow's tape blasting out 'Mike And The Mechanics' must have freaked out the Japanese fashion students that always mob the I.C.A. Moreover we often played, say a dance tape from a DJ followed by a compilation tape from an ageing politician. We had tapes from the likes of Madonna and Jennifer Aniston, to popular morning TV presenters, Fern Britten, to footballers, chefs, homeless - anyone we could think of. The club was a great success in the media and we were probably more exposed by 'Home Taping' than we were by 'Splinter' itself, which was the LP that we were trying to promote. I can't remember why we stopped doing it, probably because it was hard work and as always, we needed to change the formula. We always vowed to do another club but couldn't find a rival concept. Maybe we still might. The bootleg recording of the covers set was taped without us knowing…on a cassette. I haven't edited it, EQ'd it, mastered it, not touched one bit, as you will witness. This is in keeping with the concept of the club night. The idea was to cover 6 songs that were important to us and in true home taping style they varied quite stupidly from one to the other. We decided to perform them totally live, almost jammed, on 3 keyboards and an electronic drum pad. We stood 4 across the stage like 'Kraftwerk'. The thing I find most interesting is that this recording hints at the humorous part of the Sneaker Pimps, a part mainly kept under lock and key. Certainly I felt that playing Stevie Wonders 'Superstition' in a po-faced kraut rock style was testimony to our comic intentions. Please download it and stick it on an old cassette tape for the best enjoyment.'

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