slammered

                                       

the misty reverb piano 

the genius of the dog sample going "RUFF RUFF"

it's nutt-E, it's ethereal, it's (yes) ruff, and as it says on the tin, it's SLAMMING

proof of God's existence

the not as good but interestingly suspended-feeling remix from Man Like Gavin

another remix I've no recollection of at all - "The Slammer (DJ Rush & Fitzy Remix)" (who dem?)

like taking a marker pen to the Mona Lisa, innit 

                                      

do not recollect the B-side

neither of them

their other claims to fame 

solid biznizz

big up Terry Holt, Bernard Simon

Merry X-Mas

 

(gloomkore-junglizm via CardrossManiac2)

more yuletide ardkore jungle tekno donchaknow

phin 'n' games (don't fear the reaper)

Got into a nice discussion about the philosophical issues pertaining to "new old skool" with major exponent-proponent Tim Reaper  and Pete Devnull over at the Retromania blog, in the comments after this post....  (Third Form from Dissensus also chipping in with some unusual angles)

Tim and Pete were kind enough to point me in the direction of superior examples of the form

And I must say this chap Phineus II does blast away my hackles

It's like a perfect combo of the period-precise replication so uncanny it's like time-travel, but with a degree of intricacy that befits this obsessive-compulsive age. 

As Pete says: 

"it's jungle, classic sounding jungle, made on Amigas and Akais with 90s synths and nothing that would tip you off to it being made 25 years later. But the level of detail to the tracks is just so intense, you'd be hard pressed to find many (any?) actual 93-95s release with that amount of work. People simply didn't have time to do all that back then, since the scene was changing so fast. They didn't have 10,12,15, however many years Mikey [Phineus II] has been doing this to really dig into a particular style, figure out all the rules, and then cheekily start messing with them. At the same time, it still has that 100% rugged bedroom studio feel to it, not some overpolished aseptic "mastery" of a genre." 

2-Tone / Rough Tone

been thinking about connections between 2-Tone and rave / nuum

there are samples

                                            

Those from The Specials ("Friday Night, Saturday Morning" and "Monkey Man" respectively)

I'm sure there's one on Formation that samples the "heavy heavy monster sound" bit from Madness's "One Step Beyond"

Ah it came to me belatedly - Mastersafe, "Monster Sound"

                                        

The Madness tune is itself based on sampling - or rather it interpolates from Dave and Ansell Collins's "Monkey Spanner"

Nuumtastic. 

And then wheeling a lot further along the timeline - didn't Kode9 do a version of "Ghost Town"?

Yes indeed - him and Spaceape (RIP)

I'm sure there are others...

But this here is an unusually direct connection, if we count UB40 as on the edge of the ska / 2-Tone moment, which I think they were:

Rough Tone Recordings - UK Hardcore/Jungle/Drum & Bass Label set up in 1992 as a side project by UB40 member Earl Falconer together with Reggae trumpet player Patrick Tenyue and sound technician Gerry Parchment. They also formed the main act E.Q.P. and promoted the Earthquake raves in Birmingham.

Sublabels

EQP Music, Rough Tone Records

and 

And lo and behold a sample from the Specials - "Why" - the same EP that produced the "No Sleep Raver" / 4 Hero sample,  "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" being the other of the two B-sides to "Ghost Town"

EQP's real claim to fame, this demented tune

More tuff tuneage from Rough Tone Recordings 

decent tuneage