"House was everywhere in 2012 like it was a new idea. Like it had just been invented. Like it had something new to say! Sadly, as someone who first discovered house several decades ago (rather than just when dubstep fell off) none of these felt true and its stiff, stifling formula sleepwalked waves of former bass-heavy advocates into a sea of mediocrity.  Rather than drown in it, I broadly chose to swim elsewhere"

chortle! sfunny cos it's true....  from this survey of dance music in 2012 by Blackdown aka Martin Clark

he recommends a heap of tunes, including a couple of jackin bassers that get past his electro-house- antipathy barricades (accepting jackin' when it's tracky -- isn't that to miss the point of JB a bit? what do you say, Dominic?)

but mainly repping for what he calls 'dark' which i guess is dark garage, which i guess is early Horsepower / "Dilemma" / Narrows

 i must say it doesn't sound a whole heap much further on from 2001 but it's quite vibey

and naturally there's lots more subdivisions, mapping out of interzones and overlaps, convergences at various strata of b.p.m.

Don't Call Me Urban -- a photographic docu-book about grime

Tape Crackers: An Oral History of Jungle Pirate Radio 

 

 

 

 

me, interviewed by the Berlin-based vinyl-phile magazine iCrates, talking about re-edits versus originals (Todd Terje versus Stevie Wonder), the flow of analogue time, and how non-digital formats provide vital impedance to our restlessness (impedance, not impudence as the translation has it...)


incidentally those pix are taken across the courtyard from Dubplates + Mastering, home base of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, and a temple of the analogue cult

Satin Storm!

as in "Nicholas Parsons, Nicholas Parsons"

as in "Think I'm Going Out Of My Head", one of the strangest of 1992's hardcore-edging-into-darkcore tunes

Satin Storm = Travis Edwards + girlfriend (Dapo?)

Satin Storm done a heap of tunes

God bless you Satin Storm

Sacred!

George Kelly, the mystery man!


"Do It Together", #1 on my h-kore want list

George done a bunch of other cool tunes though

plus other Sacreds i can't find

plus stuff under other identities

Rabbit City!

Great little label, not much talked about these days, bit like Rising High in that it moved around in a zone between acid, industrial-strength hardcore, breakbeat hardcore, hardtrance and UK tekno

Well well well - i knew it was mentally linked for me with Edge, and turns out that Gordon Edge, aka Gordon Matthewman, co-founded Rabbit City with Colin Faver in 1991.

Force Mass Motion was one of the main artists -- Michael Wells who i've always assumed was the same Michael Wells as in John + Julie / Technohead / Church of Ecstasy / Tricky Disco etc etc -- but apparently not

the other Edge

Edge!

Edge, as in "Compounded", sometimes spelled "Compnd" - one of the greatest rave tunes of all time, as the YouTube poster puts it, "Everyone Used To Go Mental When This Was Dropped"

Made by a man called Gordon Edge

Principal artist on the label Edge Records

Here is his bio, which is full of surprises


Biography of Gordon Edge

Real name /	Gordon Matthewman
Moniker(s) /	DJ Edge, Trumpetman, Edge Test, Trumpet Thing, Digital Domain, Gordon Matthewman

> DJ, Producer & Musician:

** Resident of Bora Bora, Ibiza & Kinky Malinki UK/Ibiza

Probably the most under-rated DJ/Producer of the last 15 years. Gordon Edge is a truly exceptional talent, combining the totally unique DJ experience of 3 deck mixing while adding his own personal “edge” playing Live Trumpet, he offers a versatile style and sound that is equally at home when played at the biggest clubs in the world, as it is at the most intimate private parties.

Whether it’s a dark dingy underground club in deepest darkest Siberia, or dancing on the tables in the sunshine at Bora Bora, Ibiza, if you’re lucky enough to catch Gordon in action it will be always be an unforgettable experience that you will remember forever.

Gordons unique notoriety has kept him in continual high demand, as a DJ Gordon has appeared in practically every country throughout the world with 2008 being no exception. In this year alone he has rocked the crowds in Lithuania, Spain, Germany, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Dubai, Egypt, Austria, Switzerland plus grand tours of Russia, India and South America, including appearances at Pacha, Sirena & El Divino in Brazil. After the success of this years India tour Gordon was honoured to be asked to return to India for the Launch of GQ Magazine in Mumbai amongst a whole host of ‘A list’ celebrities from the world of Bollywood.

Ibiza, is Gordons second and spiritual home, after arriving on the island in 1998 a 2 week holiday turned into a whole summer, and he fell in love with the island so much he bought a home there! He quickly became widely known as the DJ with the trumpet, and tagged the “trumpet man” alias. He went on to become a regular feature at all the major venues on the island, including Pacha, Space, Amnesia, Privilege & El Divino and was soon snapped up for a coveted residency for the infamous Bora Bora, where in season you can catch him playing his marathon 5-8 hour sets at the worlds most renowned beach venue.

With such international demand it’s a wonder the Gordon ever gets time to come home, but not forgetting his roots, back on UK terra firma he holds a residency for Kinki Malinki, and is a regular feature for Mynt in Belfast & The Gallery at Ministry of Sound.

As a trumpet player he not only played for Sade on her world tour but also for Madonna at private parties she hosted in Miami & New York.

** Producer

Gordon has released over 170 12" records under such names as DJ Edge, Trumpetman, Edge Test, Trumpet Thing, Digital Domain, Gordon Matthewman & Gordon Edge, many of these on his own labels EDGE Records, Rabbit City Records and XVX Records selling well over half million world wide. True highlights have included legendary hardcore classic: ‘Edge *1 – Compnded’ (1992), enormous Ibiza anthem: ‘Gordon Matthewman – Itza Trumpet Thing’ (1998) & the Colossal ‘Gordon Edge - Set Your Body Free / Trumpet Funk’, released on Eric Morillo’s award winning Subliminal Label (2005). Gordon’s tracks have also featured on countless compilations over the years, including Café Del Mar, Real Ibiza, Budda Bar and many Ministry of Sound compilations. Now hard at work in the studio again watch this space for the next exciting instalment from the legend that is…GORDON EDGE

Pretty good cover version of "Good Life", but the absolute best bits of it are the bits where it sounds exactly like the original - i.e. when the Glancing Light Beam Riff comes in.

Sublime!

Inner City are actually a band I've seen perform live, which is not something I can say of many techno or house legends. At Heaven, in early 92, when they were promoting stuff from the third LP Praise.

An uneasy mix of vocal house and hardcore.

This track though is a decent stab at the bleep sound (North of Watford mix, nice one Kev)

 

Kevin Saunderson was never afraid to move with the times, he had that primal gotta-shift-some-units instinct.... in that sense had more in common with Todd Terry than with the other two Bellevillites

As Tronikhouse, he went all out H-core - indeed put out a 3-tracker titled Hardcore Techno.

Wish he'd played those at Heaven. Instead it was all stuff off of Praise.

"Praise" itself came in a million mixes...

Back to Inner City's one true Moment   ( and yes I never quite saw "Big Fun" as in the same league of sublimity) ... Parts of that Kaori remix seem to involve doing "Good Life" in a style that predates Inner City. e.g. the phased-vocal-disco of Raw Silk "Do It the Music" or something vaguely Brazil-1970s or sultry percussive Sleeping Bag-esque...

couple more mixes

it's not Julie Christie's version of "Bushes and Briars" (actually voiced by Isla Cameron, song advisor on Far From Madding Crowd) that DJ Seduction and Bumble sampled (Bumble first, then sampled by Seduction, presumably?)....  So whose version was it? Nobody seems to know...

info about the song scooped off the net:

The song "Bushes and Briers" was 'collected' by Ralph Vaughan Williams at Ingrave, Essex, on 4th December, 1903, from the singing of Mr Charles Pottipher, a seventy-year-old labourer.

"Vaughan Williams had been specifically invited by the local Vicar's daughters to attend an old people's tea-party their father was giving, so that he could meet some real traditional singers. In fact, he only noted the first verse of Bushes and Briars from Mr. Pottipher, being then new to song-collecting, and later got the rest of the words from a broadside published by Fortey of Seven Dials." (from the Mudcat thread, below)

The Essex version is perhaps the best known because of its inclusion in the film of Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd".


LYRICS:
Through Bushes and through briars
I lately took my way
All for to hear the small birds sing
And the lambs to skip and play

I overheard my own true love
Her voice it was so clear
"Long time I have been waiting for
The coming of my dear

Sometimes I am uneasy
And troubled in my mind
Sometimes I think I'll go to my love
And tell to him my mind

But if I should go to my love
My love he would say nay!
If I show to him my boldness
He'll ne'er love me again."

The words are different in the version used by Bumble and Seduction:

"sport and play" rather than "skip and play"

never knew this existed 

Matthew Ingram's excellent write-up of the new Autechre lp (as much a career to date overview as a review of exai) in the latest issue of The Wire made me want to reconsider their oeuvre....  which I'd always distantly respected but never really loved ...  indeed most of the CDs I'd got rid of a few years ago in a fit of hardhearted purging... 

Thought I'd start at the beginning and go all the way through...

I never fully registered before that Autechre started out as near-enough hardcore with "Cavity Job"  -  nail-gun breaks and acideous gabble and sample-smear riffs, not a million miles from DJ Trax and Rabbit City and Edge#1 'Cmpnd' (very Autechre-ish title now i think of it). Makes perfect sense, though, seeing as Booth & Brown were electro kids into graffiti, just like your Danny Breaks and  Liam Howletts and Hypes and so forth.

The Legofeet stuff (which I guess is strictly speaking before the beginning) is protean and protozoan -- sketches and doodles that are fractured intimations and hinting glimpses-forward to jungle, IDM, and the avant-beatizm of such as Req  (Skint's purveyor of deconstructed hip hop) 

Now onto the albums proper...

Req = very Autechre-like in its conversion of B-boyism ("wreck") into something ciphered and abstracted and also graphically pleasing... 

don't do that 

DANGEROUS

The Eclipse is a club I should have liked to have witnessed in its heyday

One of a bunch.

club telepathy

innersense at the lazerdrome

rage

(can't find no footage)

 amnesia house

 lancashire warehouse raves

orbital raves

bleep era sheffield leeds etc warehouse parties (can't find any footage of them)

konspiracy, thunderdome, and that scary one in the Hulme Crescents where they knocked the walls out between several flats, the Kitchen

and still more...

BUT

really, i seen enough

more than enough 

if i'd seen anymore, i might not have been in good enough shape to recollect any of it in tranquility

a wodge of prodge

via dissensus

 Disclosure, the 2step garridge revival, I read,  second coming of Artful Dodger supposedly


but this tune, number 2 in the UK pop charts at the moment, doesn't sound particularly 2steppy to me

can't hear much bump 'n' flex there...

still, definitely a 90s retro-dance vybe



track sounds weirdly compressed to me, frequency range scrunched, like it's been mixed to sound good through a phone

number 2, up 26 places in a week! even in its much-reduced present state, that's one thing you can still say for the UK chart: it does let in some out of left-field, up-from-below stuff, unlike Billboard which effectively screens out anything that hasn't got a huge machine behind it....

then again, number #1 on Billboard, and in the UK pop charts too , is Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and that's self-released

tom and jerry, and nothing but tom and jerry



an oldie but goodie by dj extreme of Hardcore you Know the Score bloggg

via Drum Trip


track list

01 The One Reason [SHELL001]
02 Physics [SHELL002]
03 The Second Reason [SHELL001]
04 Baby Don’t Shout [SHELL002]
05 Papillon Love Song [SHELL003]
06 We can be Free [SHELL002]
07 A patch of Blue [SHELL003]
08 For the Gold Teeth (F.N.T) [SHELL002]
09 B.O.S. Realting [SHELL003]
10 Let your spirit Rise [SHELL004]
11 Cat got your Tongue [SHELL003]
12 Programme 205 [SHELL004]
13 Scooby’s Dreaming [SHELL005]
14 Strings & Me [SHELL004]
15 Nine Lives (mind out tube mice) [SHELL005]
16 All alone with Dog Face [SHELL006]
17 Yamming snacks like Shaggy [SHELL005]
18 Sun on my Head [SHELL006]
19 Mousetrap (dangerous) [SHELL004]


a few things missing  - this first one is a bit of a major omission in my humble

so i guess Tom and Jerry was 4 Hero's crowdpleaser alter-ego...   the outlet for tunes that were rinsing and pretty, not experimental or out-there - low-pressure output, maybe, knocked out quicker, without that self-imposed self-daunting expectation of surpassing themselves, breaking new ground each time  (which would explain why T&J was shunted out, in great volume, via a different label, Shell, not through Reinforced itself) 

then again - this one is pretty weird and abstract - so maybe not - maybe the lines got blurred

Funny video (Dizzee's filled out some, hasn't he?)

The bassline's a bit... on the boring side, though, don't you think?

Something about the pogo-ish feel of the track make me of these guys

Rotterdam Terror Corps, as in "Poing"

as in "Bass Be Louder"

as in "Bass!"

as in "Bass Dominion"

as in "Appelflap" - okay that doesn't fit the bass-ic theme but i included it cos it's a collab with my old gloomcore fave Dr. Macabre

Gabba is still pretty popular then, I gather

Angerfist!

So this is Belgium, presumably?

Hainaut... yes, Belgium.

The French speaking bit, as opposed to the Flemish regions abutting the Homeland of Gabber.

The sound ("hardstyle"?) is yet another case of "frozen future", "arrested futurism"

imagine the future as a distorted 909 kick stomping on a human hallfloor - FOREVER