"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
My handmade Ant scarf, done with Indian ink I think, or maybe felt tip.
Also pictured, a Bow Wow Wow badge I made for the song "Elimination Dancing", with "how to foxtrot" style dance steps diagram
Strangely I don't think "See Jungle" or "Jungle Boy" or any other Bow Wow Wow song ever got sampled by the hardcore posse....
Looking to see if they were sampled, I came across the fact that Kevin Shields remixed "I Want Candy" for the Marie Antoinette soundtrack
But apart from some added echo and reverb-trails, he doesn't seem to have done a lot to it or with it.
Still, the convergence of my favorite band of circa 1981 with my favorite guitarist circa 1988 is the kind of thing that really ought to be too too much
Far more than Adam's sound, fab as it was, Bow Wow Wow was my idea of sexmusic, just as MBV was my idea of sexmusic in 88 (and indeed 89-90-91)
When I heard through the grapevine that MBV were into jungle and listening to the pirates nonstop (probably the exact same pirates as me - they lived just up the road from me in Tulse Hill then, I ran into them once outside the Effra Road laundrette), it just seemed too good to be true.
Too bad that they never put out any material in that vein - at least, not when it would have been a crucial intervention to have done so.
Ardkore is so utterly canonized now, so thoroughly written into history, that it can be understandably hard for people today to imagine how demeaned and even demonized it was back in the day.
A colleague of mine at Melody Maker - who later would co-found a dance music monthly - once declared indignantly: "jungle's just not music!"
Here's someone at the other paper with a page-full of vintage UKdance discourse circa May 1993.
Kris Needs pens a round-up of recent house, techno, progressive, garage, trance compilations, pretty much uniformly laudatory, and then squeezes in some swipes at the ardkore:
He is slightly less condescending to a dark side compilation.
That joke with the twists on Various Artists is continued all through the page, with compilations being attributed to Various Switched-On Clubbers, Various Future Foragers and Trance-Trousered Supermodels, Various Techno Warriors and Acid Scientists, etc, complimentary for the most part.
Tracklisting on the first of those comps:
Jungle House Crew–King Of The Jungle (Bamboo Mix)
Cool Hand Flex–Lock Me Up
Noise Factory–Behold The Jungle
Ellis Dee & Swan-E–Roughneck Business
Macka Brown–Go Down Baby
Satin Storm–I Think I'm Going Out Of My Head
DJ SS–OH! Master
Naz A.K.A. Naz–Organised Crime
Acen–Trip To The Moon Pt III
Killerhertz –Distant Dream
Noise Factory–We Can
Four classsics there I think... an era-characterful funny one (the first tune) and the rest is solid stuff.
Tracklist on the Darkside comp
Doc Scott– Here Comes The Drumz
Mega City 2–Darker Side Of Evil
Babylon Timewarp–Durban Poison
D Force–Original Bad Boy
Kaotic Chemistry–Illegal Subs
Metalheads–Terminator
DMS–SOS (Unreleased Baby D Mix)
Edge Of Darkness–Come Together (Original Mix)
DJ Seduction–Sub Dub
Darkman*–String Of Darkness
Noise Factory –Survival
NRG*–I Need Your Lovin' (Real Hardcore Mix)
Seven absolute classics of the era plus five solid second-rank tunes = a classic comp. A swathe across the greatest and the most near-future predictive music of the era.
So basically the Rushed-Up Nutters and especially the Gothic Nutters are spot-on about what's hot and where the cutting edge is
Now funnily enough I reviewed the second of these compilations for Melody Maker, but the bloody reviews ed never ran it. (Possibly an indication in itself that this kind of music wasn't taken seriously - or perhaps they were just tired of me banging on and on about it! ). Here's the paper print out of the review as faxed from NYC to IPC Towers (the disk file itself long corrupted and gone)
The odd markings across the page are from when I later went through it looking for lines to use in Energy Flash.
At that time there was just a couple of record shops in New York you could find these CD comps as imports, I think I found these two in a store in Greenwich Village. Because of the neighbourhood and its population, a lot of the record stores there had a kind of reflexive Anglophilia and would stock a few of anything from the U.K.
This incidentally is Needs's pick of the season, a Tresor comp, which is good-to-great stuff for sure (mostly for the Detroit inclusions).
Couldn't resist another swipe at the 'core cru - "squeezed under techno's abused umbrella, the dozen tunes on show here display a depth and diversity light years removed from both hardcore and the handbag-jiggle so often passed off as dance music in our charts and media".
Get out your Harraps French to English Dictionary, for here is an interview avec moi on Le Hardcore Continuum for the magazine Trax, conducted by Benjamin Pietrapiana.
In the Trax piece, I noticed just one garbling in the transcription / translation - where the Ari Up sample from the start of Slits' "Luv Und Romance' that features in Splash's "Babylon" - "Babylon lovers!" - has been rendered as "Babylon loves us"!
Ah, apparently this is the final issue of Trax
"The editor of the electronic music media announced last week the forthcoming disappearance of the title.... 'As in all beautiful parties, whether we like it or not, sometimes the light has to be turned on again at the end'.... After twenty-six years of precarious existence within the music press, the magazine will have retained a bold editorial line, without snobbery.... The case ends with a ghost number, the 236th, not found on newsstands (but downloadable for free here). Reading its 200 pages, we measure the loss, between interviews with the most exciting artists of the moment – Ascendant Vierge, 100 Gecs, Overmono, the rapper Hamza –, meeting with the British critic Simon Reynolds or story of the genesis of a strange disc of Corsican electronic music."
But when I checked again, the link to the adieu-ish pdf seems to have gone dead...
is a kind of revision of this from a year or two earlier
The relation is not audible in the original pre-remixed "Waremouse" though - which is astonishingly minimalistic and stark, just sub-bass boomige and MPC-triggered breaks.
Trak 1 via this Bleeps, Breaks + Bass vol 2 comp that's well worth an ear-gander
What I think of as the heart-palpitation or cardiac-arrythmia break - the asymmetry in the hi-hats -
is sourced in this track below: at around 16 seconds in the original tempo track, and then the poster has helpfully done a sped-up jungle-tempo version so check it out at 3.40 to really see the connection, and again at 5.45
But what's the source for the Prince Lover Dalu beat? There's 'Think' in there but I'm not sure that is actually where the hi-hat flutter comes from. Possibly it's achieved through retriggering on an MPC.
Twas a genuinely perturbing track to hear the Q-Bassed "Dark Stranger" on the pirates, not for the horror movie elements but the juddery bass and shuddery synths (like a prickle of fear twitching tip-toe up your spine) and above all the heart-skips-a-beat effect, the little jolts in the rhythm. Syncopes is the medical term.
Not sure I ever heard it this in a club. But we did play it in the car when we drove out of Even Furthur in '96 in the grey dawn. It really fit the tired-wired feeling of aftermath.
Put this on the Energy Flash CD - but infuriatingly they gave us the edit version as used on the Drum and Bass Selection 1 comp, instead of full 7 minutes plus terror ride. So just as the awesome drop at around 4.40 is about to yawn chasm-like, the track fades!
Still the palpitation break and the clammy synth and the abyssal bass are present and correct.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Q Bass remix of "The Dark Stranger" is so far above the original, it's befuddling. On the original, the heart-tremor break is there from the start, but it's buried - not made the most of. And then you have the hammy screams. It's the clunkier side of darkcore.
The gap between the original and the remix parallels the improvement in "Lord of the Null Lines" between the Hyper-On Experience original and Foul Play's re-production. Similar sort of romping maximalism that then gets pared down. (Although I do like the original "Null Lines" a lot - a great example of Hyper-On's busy-busy approach to arrangement).
The Origin Unknown remix of "Dark Stranger" is a definite improvement - the jolty hi-hats are starting to take effect, the bass is gloopily doomy. But I could do without the Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman vocals.
Johnny Jungle doesn't seem to know what's he about with his version.
So the Q Bass Remix is supreme. And in fact it's only version I ever heard on the pirates. It must count as one of the greatest auto-remixes (Boogie Times Tribe is Q Bass - plus D'Cruze).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All the versions plus the flipside(s) "Real Hardcore" in a playlist
From a George Melly article on contemporary styles of dancing, written for the New Statesman, spring 1962:
"An All-Night Rave at the Alexandra Palace"
An all-night 'trad' ball held in the echoing and chilly infinity of the great hall of the Alexandra Palace. Band followed band from 9-30 PM until 7-30 AM the next morning. The audience were dressed almost without exception in 'rave gear'. As the essence of 'rave gear' is a stylized shabbiness, the general effect was of a crowd scene from a biblical epic. To describe an individual couple, the boy was wearing a top hat with 'Acker' painted on it, a shift made out of a sugar shack with a C.N.D. symbol painted on the back, jeans, and no shoes. The girl, a bowler hat with a C.N.D. symbol on it, a man's shirt worn outside her black woolen tights. 'Trad' dancing in the contemporary sense is deliberately anti-dancing. When I first went to jazz clubs, there were usually one or two very graceful and clever couples. But today the accepted method of dancing to trad music is to jump heavily from foot to foot like a performing bear, preferably out of time to the beat. I have no explanation to offer for this unattractive fad, unless it is to underline that they have no connection with the lovers of pop music, all of whom dance rather well in a somewhat mechanical way. Trad musicians have christened these self-made elephants 'Leapniks'.
And then in an old Newsweek article, reporting on the Beaulieu Jazz Festival.
Among their fans is a teen-ager who, holding a container full of cider, whisky and gin. said the last word on the trad boom recently on BBC TV: "If it really comes to it.'' said the traddist, "I prefer jazz to sex."
Redolent of the classic pill-popping born-again techno head who says they prefer raving to sex!
Tabloids confused about their youth categories - jumbling together leapniks and beatniks
Beatnik youth with surprisingly long hair (the guys) for 1960, but very mild mannered and sweet
"Raver's Edge" by Mick Mulligan (king of the ravers) and chums - including George Melly
Melly interviewed in 1959
Interviewer says: "Many people see the world of jazz as hysterical teenagers and dope cigarettes..."
"Rhythm is the only stimulus..."
Apparently ravers in the tradjazz sense still could be found in the 1970s, according to this Chris Welch piece from Melody Maker in 1972. (Unless it's some kind of spoof or parody of a trend watching field report).
Probably if you are reading this blog, you've already heard the news that the entire Moving Shadow back catalogue, or near enough, suddenly materialised on Spotify, Tidal, and other streamers! And as Matthew McKinnon notes in the comments, it's also digitally available in buyable form at Boomkat, Bleep et al.
I have been listening to it almost continuously since late last week and I've still only got to late 1995!
It's not completely complete - some very early stuff is missing, and as you go through on the Spotify playlist, tracks are sometimes listed but there's no audio - withholding of right by some artists? logistical delays?
Still, it's damn close to the entire discography.
I have a feeling my will to continue right to the end (which is some point in the late 2000s) will crumble, as the liquid funk bongos-a-ripplin' direction dominates, while the counter-direction would be all that Dom & Roland type stuff. (Update: 6/14 - got to somewhere near the end of '97 and the will to continue did in fact fade away).
But who knows? So far, I've turned up a fair few gems that I'd missed at the time. More on those below.
Update 6/14 - a nice trajectory through the discography steered by Rob Haigh himself. (Hat tip Matos)
Here's a few work-in-progress playlists of my own....
A YouTube list for the things not on Spotify / Tidal - as of yet mostly the earliest releases
Bliss-I- Missed-List(again this is being added to steadily as gems turn up even during the bongo-rippling days)
Moving Shadow Single Artist Albums(a massive bloc of listening, dominated by the prolific Omni Trio and E-Z Rollers - I honestly doubt I'll wade through this all the way to the end, but I do want to do right by Rob Haigh and the Rollers)
Now to gems uncovered
In '94 I would have been paying very close attention to the output of Moving Shadow - checking the releases in the shops every week (most of that year I was back living in London). Plus they had me on the mailing list and a steady stream of promos were arriving to my door. So imagine my surprise to come across a pair of releases that I never heard or heard of.... nor ever come across later in all my years of scouring record shops to scoop up old skool hardcore and jungle... those M&VE years of trading in CDs (brought over on the plane on my visits back to the homeland) for their exchange paper currency and then immediately converting that to old vinyl.
One of these Lost Gem releases involves an all-time fave producer too - DJ Trax
The common denominator in both releases is the excellent Dev Pandya (half of Mixrace with DJ Trax), but here going as Brown.
Then there's someone called Rhymeside.
The Brown & Rhymeside stuff is astonishing - like a demented drum solo.
I can't imagine either of these track getting much play from deejays, it's way too haywire for dancers. But I never even heard these once on a pirate, where the deejays were freed up to be more adventurous selectors.
The 12-inch by Trax & Brown is also clattery and battery but not quite as manic. Apparently this never got a release, there were only a handful of test pressings.
Ah, look, a version of it did come out the following year, on a label called Mob Handed
Actually, only the title has been kept - it's a different track!
Thatside track
Call me sick in the head but I would like to hear Track 3, "Acknowledgements" - even if it's just them reciting a list of allies and enablers through an echo chamber.
DJ Trax sometimes went as Dangerman - and here is a track by Brown & Dangerman on Stronghold
"Ideas for the Ear to Fear" - great title!
Now I could swear I reviewed something by Brown & Dangerman in my sporadic jungle 12 inch roundup column for Melody Maker's Stone Free section...
Ah, I did, in February 1995 - this very record!
BROWN & DANGERMAN-- "Dreams of Another World" (Stronghold) Superfast breaks surge through a whooshing wind-tunnel of aciiiiied frequency-modulations.
Sgt Wilson aka John le Mesurier is the narrator on the original series
But it's a different - smarmier - voice used on the record
Gavin C he had a lot of aliases and scrutinizing those names I suddenly saw like a flash another toytown tekno contenda - Windy Milla, based on Windy Miller, a character from Camberwick Green - (itself a spin off of Trumpton - Camberwick Green being a village in Trumptonshire. Or is Trumpton a spin-off of Camberwick Green? Hauntology cru will know)
Sure enough the "Windy Miller" song is sampled and sped up in "Windy's Theme"
Brian Cant at 78 rpm
Windy Miller get mash up on scrumpy
Late addition of another piece of Bod-y music via yt in comments:
Grant Nelson, aliased as Ruff Rider, put out this track "Move Ya Bod" on the Shaggy Ridims EP
Don't know think there's any kids TV sampling in the tunes but the name of the group and the imagery comes from characters on the Eighties kids TV show You and Me.
Cosmo & Dibs = Rob Playford and a fellow called Steve Thrower
Back when things were still a bit rectilinear and sequencer-clunky, the vocal samples loop-da-looping - but a breakbeat phatness is beginning to make itself felt
Yes, that counts I think - a Disney movie. Definitely aimed at kids. I always loved this tune - both in the film and repurposed for genre-name-consolidating track.
Suggested several posts back by Matt M
Featuring the Magic Roundabout theme
The Mark Summers tune is the opener of this whole mix of toytown tekno, which led me to some other tunes which will be getting the spotlight shortly.
Tracklist:
Mark Summers - Magic Roundabout 91
GSP - Banana Splits (cut it out mix) 92
Gavin Cheung - Here Comes Bod 92
Solo - Rainbow 91
Shaft - Roobarb & Custard 91
Sons Of Bungle - Rainbow Vibes 92
Unknown - The Simpsons 92
Bolt - Horspower (Black Beauty) 92
SOA - Muppets Mayhem 92
SmartEs - Loos control (Sesame Street rave mix) 92
Children's Stories - (Charlie &) The Chocolate Factory mix92
Nexus & Blowback - Totally Cabbaged (Rainbow) 92
And some of "German toytown" suggestions from hamarplazt
Yes, that's based on Sesame Street, the German version
A Pippi Longstocking job
Spunk Remix sounds a bit questionable in this context...
