Pirate Treasure (just 4 U every-1)

Recently I had some bloodwork done and experienced what's known in the trade as a "vasovagal syncope". When I came to, I was surprised to find a medical team strapping monitors on my chest and putting an IV into my forearm. In retrospect, I think they over-reacted a bit, but I guess they have procedures they have to follow.

While they bustled around saying alarming things like "pulse is down to 38", the nurse who'd been drawing blood in the first place was elevating my legs for better blood-flow to the brain and trying to wake me with questions. Like, "What's your hobby? "Music," I mumbled groggily.  "What's your favourite kind of music?," he asked. "Jungle".

Maybe if I'd been less out of it I'd have hedged and offered some extra contenders (like postpunk or psychedelia or....) to round out the picture of self.  But in that extreme moment, the first word that popped into my head was "jungle".  Which must make it true: this music is my heart's core.

Certainly I've never experienced anything more electric than the 92-94 jungalistic hardcore / jungle techno / junglizm  moment. At no other time have I felt plugged into something so deliriously present-tense and can't-believe-your-ears NEW. Neither before or since have I felt such a strong sensation of significance pulsating from a scene and a sound. 

My favorite format for my favorite music is of course the pirate tape. In the mix: a choppy relentless surge of track into track upon track against track (nameless, then, almost all of them - and in some ways the better for it - on my cassettes I would give them made-up titles like "Spangly Tingler"or "Woogly & Ruff").  In the ride: an MC possessed by the mania of the music.

Other components of a classic pirate tape for me include wicked ad breaks (these later became one of my favorite elements of the tapes I'd made, causing me to curse the number of times I had edited them out), some inelegantly wasted nonsense and randomness from studio personnel, even the odd fuck-up on the decks.

Out of the scores of 92-93 tapes I recorded,  you will find below the creme de la creme. I digitized them a while back but never got around to uploading. I offer them now to the common weal.

Starting with a couple of miscellanies - compilations of best bits from the whole collection. Take care, these are so rush-packed they may well induce vasovagal syncope - a.k.a. a whitey - in their own right.

(the first and bestest installment of that series is further down this post, where I have the ones I uploaded to YTube a while back.)

Then onto the freshly loaded pirate tapes proper

This next one mis-titled - it should read "Impact FM 1992 or early 1993".

There were a couple of others I put up on YouTube that have been already blocked for copyright, annoyingly.

I also uploaded a Slipmatt old skool set - the best one I ever heard -  that I'd taped in 1997 off of One In the Jungle, MC Det on the mic. But that one also got blocked - not because anything of in the mix, but because of a snippet of drum and bass, from when the normal show resumed, that I'd left on at the end, dammit! However you can find the set below or on YouTube. (I must say my own recording sounded brighter and louder).



And then this one  - not actually recorded by me but by a hardcore-loving DJ from Philadelphia who'd taped it on a visit to the U.K and a few years later kindly dubbed it for me. I'm struggling to dredge his name from my memory (which gets worse every day) but I believe it was DJ Geoff E. In his opinion this was the greatest hardcore set he ever heard.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And here are the ones I put up on YouTube previously, starting with that first installment in the Pirate Faves Series:








This next one overlaps slightly with the Don FM August 7 1993 one above, but is just the most electrifying 20 minutes or so of the full session (which is really good, well worth hearing in its entirety).






Again, this is the most electric portion of the FMB Crew Feb 12 1993 set above. It comes from the second video, "the climax" - but is shorter than that second video.

And finally two great ads for Telepathy that I have pulled out and isolated from these tapes, one from '93 and the other from '96. Who is that MC?






Oh and finally finally - a favorite bit out of a tape somebody else made - shout outs to the entire scene from Shakedown FM's Infinity

guts, and flash, and energy, and speed

"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. Nobody, to my knowledge, had ever written a serious book on the subject, so I had no exemplars to inhibit me. Nor did I have any reference books or research to hand. I simply wrote off the top of my head, whatever and however the spirit moved me. Accuracy didn't seem of prime importance (and the book, as a result, is rife with factual errors). What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed. Those were the things I'd treasured in the rock I'd loved" 

                                       - Nik Cohn, on Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom

"e"

But where oh where is the fourth track on this "e" EP Analyser -  "NGC 891"? Named possibly after either the Edgar Froese track off of Aqua (which it may well sample from, who knows?). Or after the "edge-on unbarred spiral galaxy" that the Froese track is named after....



The great missing mystery tune by "e" - also rendered as 'E' apparently - is at the start of this pirate session...



"sounds of 'e'! - coming atcha!!!!"

After many years of loving that mistreee choon, I stumbled across the origin of the samples in it - Pink Floyd! I had called it a "Little Black Disc With Me Tune On It" after the main vocal lick - that's what I scrawled on the cassette.  But that bit's also taken from Pink Floyd - s a twist on the bit in The Wall that goes "I've got a little black book with me poems in it".



Another "e" tune getting a bit intelligent techno-y



And that's it for "e" as far as YouTube is concerned.


Actually I tell a lie...

"e" did some acid tracks back in 1988 - for a compilation called Blast the Joint.





This early 'E' also did a track entitled "E"


Not to be confused with Mr E

fast and slow

This one pulls off a pretty neat trick of sounding flurry-fast and slow-and-low at the same time

not quite so won over by this one, which apparently Doc Scott thinks is the best track he's ever released on his label.  it has the slow-and-low bit down, but not the flurry-fast aspect, so it's a more monodimensional. Good though in it's cold, dank, neuro-ish way.