"Mad, bad and dangerous-to-know techno that shoots off in ten directions at once" - NME
"Classic. Nothing else matters this week" - Melody Maker
"This is the multi-sonic Si Begg at his very best... Superb stuff" - Muzik
"A Buckfunk 3000 album in February '98 should see Si blow up big style with music categorisation collapsing in ridicule" - Jockey Slut
"Like all the best music it's beyond my feeble vocabulary. Can anyone step to Si Begg? I don't think so" - Magic Feet

Above are just a handful of accolades that the Buckfunk 3000 maverick Si Begg has been accredited for his Systematic, Planet Shock Future Rock and 3000 singles throughout 1997. On 23 February 1998, Buckfunk 3000 released his debut album First Class Ticket to Telos on Language Records. The wait was over.The Beggster's in the place with his own mash-up mad skillz and future funkin' audio tricknology. The Dr. Who-inspired freak beatist and P-Funk bending Si Begg was back at the helm of the mothership Buckfunk.

Growing up on mad TV and making cut'n'paste sound terrorism with his Leamington Spa collective, the relocated West London-based Si has taken the musical barriers of convention and shoved 'em through the Buckfunk psycho-mangler. Currently running his own Noodles label, co-running Mosquito with partner Cristian Vogel and recording as Cabbage Boy, Bigfoot and of course Buckfunk 3000, Si Begg is set to blow up big style. Since his self-taught teenage musical years (Si played guitar, drums and bass in bands) the man has continued to experiment with both sound and style. Raw and funky with a wallop of humour to go the phuture cross pollination of 'First Class Ticket to Telos' is just what the good Dr. ordered. Fried Funk & Microchips saddles up with the G-funk rodeo and buckaroos into a Dalek disco, Planet Shock Future Rock's Bambaata bombardment takes drum'n'bass into electro nirvana whilst March of the Cybermen pogo dances into Stavros' robo disco. 3000 steps to a phuturistic G-funk beat, FunkBwithU bounds about on some elastic James Brown twang and Panic Button disturbs with its menacing sub bass and pangalactic laser beam pulsation. I Can't Stop goes for some B-Boy madness and Feedback closes the show with its eerie time travellin' echo. First Class Ticket to Telos is just that... First Class. The Buckfunk saga continues...

Buckfunk 3000 piece in the New Musical Express::

Who is... Si Begg, self-confessed Dr Who fan and proud owner of Noodles, the label that proclaims itself 'The Stupidest Recording Organization In The World'.

What does he sound like? Well, 'First Class Ticket To Telos' (his debut LP) sounds like a loony tunes battle between six fully-armed techno monsters all jacked up to their eyeballs on pure P-funk and hallucinogenic electro, basically. At least, that's when Ladbroke Grove-based Si is masquerading as Buckfunk 3000. On quieter days, he also indulges in chilled beats as Cabbage Boy for Ninja Tune's N-Tone offshoot as well as perverting the course of techno, trip-hop and squiggly electronic noises in general for the likes of Force Inc, Eukatech and Cristian Vogel's Mosquito imprint. 'First Class Ticket To Telos' even features a hardcore track, the appropriately titled 'Panic Button'.

Hardcore?! you heard. 'Panic Button' is the closest one is likely to get to being stamped by a fluorescent herd of rampaging space hippos.

"I can't think of any type of music that hasn't got a good side," declares Si of his distinctly unfashionable foray. "A thousand kids dancing all night can't be wrong. Hardcore is pure energy, it's got the balls, the youthful enthusiasm which music has before it gets coffe table-ised."

And Noodles is even dafter than that? Strange but true. Even Si admits that 'Noodles Volume 1: The Death Of The Cool' is "pretty stupid". Which is quite an understatement for a DJ tool album that features everything from rolling trombone'n'bass to obscene penny whistle folk from the delicately-monikered likes of Anal Parade and The Hibiscus Geronimo III players. As well as the only sightly more sensible likes of Spymania's Hardy Finn, Neil Landstrumm and, of course, Si himself.

Are any DJs actually brave enough to play it? Apparently so. "It's not like Pete Tong's playing it," maintains Si, "but I've heard the country and western dub track (?!) in a few chill-out rooms. And another guy said he liked scratching with the 'burp' track. Anyway, what's wrong with being stupid? I like things that make me grin. If I knew a good stand-up comedian I'd put out five mintes of gags."

What's with the Dr Who obsession? "I've always been into it," says Si, unabashed. "It's really quite scary even now." Despite all this, Si somehow managed to pluck up the courage to ask his favourite baddies the Cybermen to star on his album sleeve. "I liked the Englishness of it," he proclaims. "In America you had Buck Rogers with his gun, but here it's Dr Who with his politeness and no-need-to-run, we'll be clever and witty, give them jelly babies and trip them up with our scarves attitude. Pretty eccentric, really."

And finally, where the hell is Telos? It's where Cybermen come from, stupid. Do you know nothing?

Robert Heller, New Musical Express, 21 March 1998