"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
not so much positive hardcore as positive-thinking hardcore
he might be bald and he might use distorted kickdrums, but this man's soul is pure uncut Katy Perry
What's the obsession with thunder? is this some kind of Norse thing?
This dude is supposed to be the pioneer of H-style
It's like if Marc Acardipane = Motorhead or Sabbath, these dudes = Triumph or Survivor.
Some of the tunes in this set get a tad more interesting on the production front - skidding screeches, hysterical builds, a kind of serrated hygiene
With the "weekend warriors" Valhalla vibe, some of it reminds slightly of what I think they now call "power metal" - groups inspired by melodic metal from the Eighties.... Dio, Iron Maiden, that epic anthemic rousing sound, with galloping rhythms... boy's own stories of glory, an the emptying out of the blues traces in metal, a raunchless evacuation of sex too - even that basic phallic thrust sexuality - in favor of chaste adventurism.
Was right all those years ago to connect gabba with Nintendo etc
think Sub-Love did a whole bunch of very solid tunes that never quite caressed the Sublime like that one
this one from the same EP - Twisted Techno - has a nice bit of (well-known) dub-sonar echo-bleep - that lurches out of the roots-sway into a Belgian pummel tunnel - actually some very nice sections later (one quite LFo) - yeah, scratch the first from-memory verdict: this is a classic tune, using best phases of the 90-91-92 surge, all merged together very effectively. ruff cut breaks and sidling bass-ooze
and the EP closer very effectively uses the same vocal-hypergasm from Blame/2 Bad Mice "Music Takes" but with a different stab-pattern
Okay, this is a solid-gold classic EP, the other three tracks just the barest smidge behind lead track "Hyperactive". This one is slightly pedestrian but does the job in 91 style.
Okay on to the next EP - One by One.
Title track
Yeah I remember this one - a bit "warbling bird wuthering on". It's very similar to the Rhythm Section sound - as indeed are most of Sub-Love's tunes. And i seem to recall reading somewhere that Sub-Love did do PAs at big rave and were getting into that Rhythm Section rave-act live-draw zone. Actually this is a more than solid peak hour big tent rave anthem, with a riff in the middle that is genius - one of those itchy subdermal-swarming type timbre-tones that ignites the fever.
"Maniac Music" - more excellence - rattles along furiously and some rootical but frantic bass shaking the foundations. then the mad rummaging eurotekno-riff. Good creepy-sexy processed android lover vocals. Then out of nowhere, a blissy Balearic piano
The rather plainly named "Drum and Bass Programme" is the most interesting track here with some mad swirling soundtrack-based riffs stirring up a tempestuous, Bronte-esque feeling - then it goes all rub-a-dubby. Special tune.
Seems their naming-tunes inspiration ran out before their making-tunes inspiration did, because the desultorily titled "D.J. Bonus" is actually a nifty little rumpus. This YouTube sourced off a very scratchy copy though.
Third EP "Underground" completes a 1992 run of releases that adds up to a very fine 12 track album.
Darkness descending on "Underground" with some eerie chords, a vocoder voice, and a great shivery chatterer of a riff. This one is a bit like their equivalent to 4 Hero's "Journey to the Light". But i'm also think they were giving Hyper-on Experience a run for their money, in the maximalist quasi-orchestrated ardkore stakes. Ooh gosh and then a chiller-thriller of a icicle stab. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink in - every trick to trigger your pleasure centers.
"Change My Ways" - really not sure about that prog-rock guitar flourish that kicks things off, and then it goes off in a very strange lurch-slam groove with a blaring vaguely elephantine sound - and the overall effect is bombastic rather than boombastic. But they are allowed one really peculiar tune by this point I think - and it's definitely an oddball offering. Hits a nice chuddering-juddering groove midway - then some scratchage - and I'm reminded of DJ Trax and I'm thinking also this group should have been on Moving Shadow. There's that same peak-Shadow quality of absurd generosity, ideas being thrown out willy-nilly, tracks that go through multiple sections. This one seems to have about 11 segments to it!
"She Moves" - lithe 'n' writhy with some nice-nasty snaking teknoriffage
This is where the energy flags a bit... Cool use of creepy "you are sleeping, you do not want to believe" lady-sample (where have I heard that before? Moon Wiring Club? Is it Madame Blavatsky or some Gurdjieffan biddy?) (no of course not, silly me, it's the lady at the start of The Smiths's "Rubber Ring" - and apparently from "Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead" a flexi-disc that came with the book that document Dr. Konstanine Raudive's research into the 'electronic voice phenomenon'!)... The rest is a bit pell-mell and untogether.
This 12 inch is listed after the three EPs on Discogs, but since a remix of the lead track on the 12 inch appears on the Twisted Techno EP, i'm assuming this is actually the debut single - also from 92 - especially as it has a bit of a fledgling, not-there-yet feel. Then the three EPs must have followed. Discogs not infallible shocker.
flipside
1993 and one last blast from Sub-Love - except it's a damp squib, the touchpaper soggy and unsparking A sense of flinching from the full plunge into the darkside - and perhaps a touch of vacillating, both-sides-of-fence taking on trance's clinical sheen. Worse though is that there's a misconceived and not-pulled-off-at-all go at writing an original song as in a sung song, rather than a track. And there's a proper vocal here - prey to all the thin-ness that often comes with those kind of moves in the H-zone.
And that was that- until 2011 when Sublogic put out some unreleased tunes as two pricey slabs o'vinyl
"Coherent Flow" is an amusing title
One of these Sublogic reissue / first-time-issue ardkival tunes did actually have had some kind of very limited white label release at the time - uncredited, but by the group's main man, Jody Wisternoff
Pretty cool that one and nice use of the Lennon or is it Ferry "Jealous Guy" as rave-trigger - "i began to lose control".
Overall though the material on the two Sublogic issues - as you'd expect given this stuff didn't get a release the first time round - does fit my first spoke-too-soon verdict at the start: that everything apart from "Hyperactive" was "good but nowhere near as good". Still it adds up to near enuff a whole other LP's worth of solid tuneage - stuff that will please those with an insatiable appetite for "this kind of thing".
(By the way, there seems to be little consensus or consistency about how to spell the group's name - on the early record labels it's rendered either as Sublove (or SUBLOVE) as if all one word OR as Sub-Love. On Discogs, they do it as Sub Love. But on the Sublogic releases, it's Sub-Love.
Oh one more thing - Kniteforce put out the Legacy EP, a remastered selection, with remixes by other legends like Liquid and Hyper-On Experience, and which includes an unreleased original mix of "One by One"
Now I knew there was a fact buried in my brain that was nagging away at me... something about what Sub Love became... or what came out of them...
The other dude in the group, present on the first couple of those EPs of '92 is one Daniel Kausman - later known as DJ Die.
Well that is a pretty excellent thing to have done, or been - a mainstay of a top outfit in two very different stages of the nuum.
For these are some of my all time favorite jungle tunes
And he was part of Reprazent as well, right? Not too shabby, not too shabby at all.
And then Wisternoff - again I knew this, but forgot it - was the main man behind Way Out West, a more pop dance proposition with a breaksy element. I can't remember any of their tunes but they did pretty well I seem recall in that boom-era of second-half-Nineties ukdance.
