imaginary forces / basic rhythm

nice use of fragments of rufige cru in that one

Type's press release for Anthoney J. Hart / Imaginary Forces / Basic Rhythm:

"Anthoney Hart is hardly a newcomer. Cutting his teeth spinning hardcore, jungle and D&B at legendary pirate radio station Rude FM, Hart eventually began producing under the Imaginary Forces moniker, channeling his early influences into noisier, more abstract territory. As Imaginary Forces plumbed the depths of abstraction, Hart was keen to find an outlet for dancefloor material, and that’s where Basic Rhythm comes in.

Hart wanted to reference the hardcore and jungle he grew up obsessing over, but not simply as an exercise in nostalgia. Avoiding breaks altogether, he went back to the samples that littered the genre, reframing them with contemporary rhythms. Raw Trax is not an attempt to recapture the sound of jungle or hardcore, but a new twist on a familiar setting.

This isn’t a dull academic experiment: Basic Rhythm was always intended to be fun to listen to, fun to dance to and fun to mix. Raw Trax delivers in spades."

from a Quietus interview from a few years ago:

Anthoney J. Hart: The initial inspiration to start came from my older brother. He was involved in the warehouse rave scene in London and he used to send mix tapes down to my older sister, as we were living in Hastings at the time. I ended up stealing one of his mix tapes, simply titled "Da Mix", from her room, and it blew me away. I still remember half the track list from it... Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era - 'Far Out', Manix - 'Stupid Dope Mix', and so on. I was 11 at the time.

The next year we moved back up to London and I started buying records from Music Power in Ilford, and Total Music in Bethnal Green. The first LP I bought was the Sub Base For Your FaceLP because it had 'Far Out' on it. By the time I was thirteen I had started to save up money to go to a studio in Ashford to attempt to make jungle tracks. By this point I was buying my records from Boogie Times in Romford, home of Suburban Base, and even had the privilege of playing my first demo to Danny Breaks (Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era) and getting advice from him on how to construct my tracks.

Unfortunately my first attempts at making music were obviously pretty poor, so I focused more on my DJing. By the late 90s I was playing on a pirate station around Romford, until I eventually landed a spot on London's Rude FM. I stayed on there for a few years and started to make drum & bass tracks. But by early 2003 I had become bored with the way D&B had become so rigid in its approach, sticking to a very strict set of sounds, rules and formulas. I left Rude FM and changed my name, but still kept trying to make more experimental D&B until I was offered an opportunity to release my first album. [That album] ended up being a personal failure for me in many ways, but this failure had also told me explicitly that I needed to let go of D&B and move on to working on what I truly wanted to do.

It was quite a hard thing leaving behind a scene that I had spent over a decade involved in from its very beginning. I then spent a lot of time working on many different ideas and approaches until I got to the second album where everything seemed to come together in a way that I felt happy with. It was a huge step away from the rigid parameters of dance music, but still had that driving energy and beats."