the spark inside (kiddykore kontinuum)

 Chuck Eddy's fave single of 2024 -  "The Spark"  by Kabin Crew & Lisdoonvarna Crew, from Knocknaheeny, Cork.

The entire post-98 quarter-century-long enshittification of drum + bass redeemed at a stroke. It was all worth it.

The cadence of the rapping in the verses - with the first batch of MCs anyway - reminds me a little of Scarface on "I Seen A Man Die"

Check especially the little lad at 54 seconds

Now Kids + Breaks reminded me of this inevitably

The rapping though - as an example of Very White Rapping + high energy dance beat (the breaks are not very breaksy, more bouncy - ultra-linear NRG surge)  makes "The Spark" seem more like an outcrop of  this kind of thing and this kind of thing.

Blimey there's a whole bunch of this stuff featuring children - as performers, and prominently in the videos

"nee-naw nee-naw ... the bobbies coming / let's get running" - surprised this is still current slang for the police (it's as ancient as calling them the Peelers) 

Little crims (is there really a market for knocked-off dustcaps?)

"Mush" is a real throwback piece of slang - I remember that being a term used on Till Death Do Us Part.

Bleak vistas of new built Britain - and shrouded in fog too. 

The parent-in-me is troubled by just how many of these kids on these dirt bikes and quad bikes - doing alarming skids and backwheelies - are not wearing helmets

Many, many of these bassline + rapping tunes seem to be set on this same bike run  

Something a bit unsettling about all these pre-pubes acting gangsta -

"Been a baller since nursery"

"Ten years old and makin' wages"

"I don't wanna work, I'm a full-time G...  I like Nike and Max on my sneakers / truth is, I don't like my teachers" 

"Thirteen, making my own paper"

"I go school but I don't really need ta / Cos I got more money than all my teachers"

Little G's - and ladeez men too

"Let's take it step by step as we're only ten years old"

That's some haircut.

Like the comic strip styling of the video - puts it squarely in the Cartoon Continuum as well as the Toytown Techno lineage

MC Chippy seems to be a sort of Fagin-like figure with all these Artful Dodgers

Back to where we started... and which by default (not really been keeping track of tracks) is now my Single of the Year too

You can practically smell the Chicken McNuggets wafting off this 

The backing adlibs give off an unruly classroom, hapless supply teacher vibe. 

Only thing that mars is that whole "chase your dream" motivational thing....    find it disheartening how early these ideas are ingrained nowadays....  manifest your desire  replacing the manifesto as party program, privatized hope displacing collective advance 

toytown tekno 5 of ?

 

Cheeky-dodgy E-as-candy puns in both the group name and the track name 

The mixes

Chris Howell  - 1/3 of Smart E's - went on to record as Luna-C and a score more aliases and also to found Kniteforce Records  - later known as Kniteforce Again. He remains a stalwart with reissues, box sets, first-time issues of vintage unreleased stuff, and veterans coaxed back into the new-old fray. He's also written a tract entitled The Rave Commandments, as Christopher Howell (perhaps authors need to have more formal names?). 

Give it up to Kodwo Eshun for seeing something in "Sesame's Treet" when no one else did

  (from his Club Licks column in the Wire September 1992)

Context 

The full Club Licks column 

Here's a post-Treet tune I really like by The Luna C Project 

Actually, there's a more exciting euphoria-soaked remix of it on one of those 93 comps with 'dark' in the title 

Ah, it is in fact this one by the mighty Sublove (one of those groups who have been reissued etc etc by Kniteforce in recent years)

It's on a cusp between darkside and happy hardcore. The vocal sample is  cheesy and jaunty in style 'n' mood, but the lyrics are designed to comment on the fact everyone in the room is "under the influence". It preys on and amplifies the suppressed anxiety of dancers who maybe feel a little out of control, or like they're being controlled:  

"There's an invisible intruder / That's got inside your mind / Invading your sense of right and wrong / Making your conscience blind"

Something about the voice makes me think of The Buggles, or Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club. 

The sample was also used earlier in this Smart E's track

The sample is from a song called "Spectator Sport" by a super-obscure '80s pop group called New Beginnings. Who do have that proggers trying to go bouncy-pop vibe of Buggles. But they also appear to be some kind of Christian rock group. Which would explain the "invading your sense of right and wrong" line. Plus, I have always heard the words "an invisible intruder" as "an invisible Judas" !

But back to the first Luna-C Project EP - the whole thing is themed around insanity

A Thirdform recommendation from the comments: Luna-C alias Trip with "The Snowball", named after a super-intense pill in circulation in darkside days

Flipside maintains the druggy theme

Now that's something I'd like to get my hands on (although all the promos on YouTube I'm sure)

Crikey there was a Smart E's album - I guess if you've had a number 2 single, it's obligatory

I feel like in the Great Rave LPs discussion, someone spoke up for this record as pretty good

"A Most Excellent Choon", tee hee

Closing thoughts from John Harris in 2006: 

"Remember, though: in the dark days of 1991-93, it looked like the guitar really was extinct, but rock bit back and eventually won. Who now listens to such rave milestones as the Prodigy's 1992 hit Charly, the entire oeuvre of Altern 8 (two blokes who essentially released the same record over and over again - what cards!) and Shaft's 1992 smash Roobarb and Custard? Only very strange people."