where it's Rave Week every week

In this bleeps 'n' bass 'n' breaks mix by rave archaeologist Jerome Hill (profiled at FACT during their Rave Week, now ending)  there's a great tune on the Ozone label,  "Trak 1" - which rather alarmingly I had never heard before.

Listen to the intro -- "Trak 1" must either be the source for, or it sampled from the same source-unknown for, that warm-glow-y synth-pad sound at the start of this 2 Bad Mice tune.




What with all the new mixes of old skool that abound, plus all the vintage pirate sets and rave tape packs on YouTube and elsewhere, plus dedicated blogs digging up rare ardkore and jungle tekno, plus the never-ending string of "new old" rave-replicas and jungle-reenactments made by young artists with unerring / unnerving precision as well as older ones succumbing to nostalgia for their glorious youth, as well as labels putting out never-released or barely-ever-released tunes from the ardchives * .... it would be oh so easy to live permanently in this patch of the past.

So tempting to turn Rave Week into Rave Year.... year upon year.... for ever and ever, Amen Break.

Because so much music was made then, there's still so much to discover.... even for a professional rave historian

Here's a few more Ozone tunes I never heard











Like "Trak 1" several of these could have and probably should have gone into the FACT thing on Bleep I did a while ago, as recently reposted.


*  Jerome Hill himself combines many, if not all, of this rave-archaelogy / rave reproduction antique roles. Here's him talking about upcoming output from his labels 

"My third label is Fat Hop, which pretty much focusses on rough uptempo hip hop and b-boy breaks, and that has four records that I’m drip feeding out there over the next couple of months – namely, a 12” retrospective by rave pioneers The Blapps Posse; a 7” of hardcore influenced b-boy hip hop styles with a twist by myself under the name Itsu Uno and my Kool FM compadre DJ Warlock as Han Do Jin; plus two more 12”s coming soon from Dookie Squad, an early 90′s UK crew that are still consantly on fire – search YouTube for ’6 Feet Under’ if you want a taste.

Then also on Fat Hop there’s also a mini album from an under-the-radar 1992 crew that never had an official release but thankfully still had their old demo tape. It’s kind of a cross between Demon Boys, London Posse and Cypress Hill: mind blowingly rough, six tracks, three of which I only just found out were engineered by a young Roots Manuva! I’m particularly excited by this release as to me it’s like an artefact, time stamped from that era, that’s been frozen for 22 years and now can be unleashed as a testament to what could have been and now will be… an immensely wicked record".

Then there's his activity as a deejay:

 I present a weekly show on London’s Kool FM every wednesday 11am-1pm where I dig pretty deep into acid house, bleep, hardcore, techno, electro and loads of other stuff, mainly concentrating on the 1986-1991 era. I’m also now into the third year of running my bi-monthly techno night Don’t at an intimate venue in Kingsland road where we can bring in a nice sound system, lasers and smoke and book people from the label and similarly, umm, “un-like minded” DJs and live sets.... I’m just now getting set to play at Bestival this weekend, and had my first mix CD released a couple of weeks ago, which was myself and Mark Archer from Nexus 21 / Altern8 picking and remixing classics and brand new stuff.. It’s called ’1 Night in 88′. 

Reading the interview though (done by Joe Muggs), doesn't seem like he's followed the straight-and-narrow Nuum Path. After a breaks-y, bleep-y, bass-y ardkore + UK hip hop start:

"Around about 1993 or 4 I sadly went down a musical dead-end and started buying some quite dodgy mid nineties housey stuff, which at the time I thought was great, but was actually clearly a product of ecstasy mind clouding.... Thankfully I was swiftly rescued once again by techno, care of the Final Frontier parties every friday at Club UK, and from there, some time in 1994 I fell into the London illicit warehouse party scene and in particular Jiba sound system who I played with every weekend in the mid to late 90′s in some amazing reclaimed venues.... Then I got a job managing a record shop in Camden – Dragon Disc – and although we were predominantly a techno specialist, I had access to so much different music and ended up being the confused but happy muddle of all the different genres I love and play today."

Which is no crime of course, but interesting that he's so invested in that end of Eighties to early Nineties period now....  perhaps it's just better music? Stood the test of time better?  Vibesier? Unlike other equally-E-fueled-and-framed music of the 90s, it can stand on its merits, even long after the drug-haze has dissipated.

Interesting sentiment, here, on young people being able to connect with these sounds from 20 to 25 years earlier, despite low-level production:

"I don’t think it’s that much of a foreign sound for them, plus there’s the internet where anyone if they’re interested can trace stuff back to it’s origins and recognise the threads running through it all. It’s funny that word “retro”. I never use it really, as the music from that era, turned over and morphed so quickly into its current incarnations – late eighties house and electro morphing into 1990 breaks, bleeps and bass, moving in to hardcore, and then in about 1994 into drum’n'bass and jungle, which are still both going strong today.

"Like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, it’s easy to forget that hardcore, or “old skool” as its often called now only lasted three years, if that, before completely evolving into something else, and that original form is not made any more. I can understand “retro” being applied to old rock n roll music, but hardcore? It’s not retro: it’s just hardcore. It’s like Latin is an extinct language that influenced our language – it’s an extinct music that still has relevance today. UK heritage! "

And on what is still left to revive and revisit:

"I think new beat definitely should have a revival. The Sound Of Belgium film threatened to cause a revival and i thought it was going to, but it never happened..I also put out a 12” with two of my favourites on Don’t a few years ago. I love that sound. It’s wonderfully dated but yet still manages to sound completely mystical. Acid house and hardcore have been enjoying an extended revival now for some time, and that’s all still good. As for what should be bagged up and dumped over a bridge never to return, I guess prog house, and horrible piano rave froth like Rozalla"