MAXIMUM BOOST (MADE IN LONDON)

"Marble Mix"?

 

"Woking Cru"

Initially read "Mc BRISK" as McBrisk -  as in a Scottish name, rather than MC Brisk as in an MC

The True Oasis (Hertscore Continuum)

Unfortunately they are the Shed Seven of ambient jungle, but below is something of a classic

Oaysis - from St Albans!

Part of the Hertscore Continuum!

Outposts in Stevenage, Hertford itself, Hitchin ... 

Labels like Moving Shadow, Candidate and PM Records.... 

Photek, Source Direct... 

Omni Trio obviously

Nookie is from Hitchin

2 Bad Mice / Kaotic Chemistry....

Chill Records was based out of Luton.... as in early bleep tracks by Original Clique etc

But more strictly in the ardkore to jungle line, Gappa G and Hypa Hypa, from Luton

Who played on a pirate called Perception FM, out of Luton / Hitchin area

As did DJ Concrete 

And to my surprise there were other pirate radio stations in Hertfordshire

Via RollDaBeats forum, ancient post

Mad FM

freq: 90.6

area: Hertfordshire

broadcast out of Hertford town centre

known years running: 1990/1-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: 2 Stoned crew (2 bad mice in disguise), dj lucky, dj active, dj duffy

 

Frequency FM

freq: 101.4fm

area: Hertfordshire

known years running: 1991-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: DJ Legacy (myself), DJ Twist, DJ Nitemare, DJ Donny P, DJ Shiva

Got bust when the aerial got blown down in high winds.

(and this one, shrouded a bit in non-knowledge)

Unknown FM

freq: 108.0 fm

area: Hertfordshire (not 100% though)

known years running : no idea

basic style genre: no idea

known dj's: no idea

And what do you know, just this morning Droid alerts me to this release by Justice and Metro, a mini-LP  titled PRESSURE 101.5 FM-Luton Pirate Memories. 

It's actually from a few years ago and is woven out of old pirate adverts and jingles - info about long-lost record shops and club nights in the Luton and Dunstable area.

"J and M takes us on a journey back to the 90's and compile Pirate radio adverts from their local station Pressure FM. The flip is a track inspired by the sounds being broadcast around the rave era."

Hark at the well spoken voices in the adverts...  big up the bourgeoisie! big shout going out to the  middle class massive!

"Right of admission is reserved - and this is a drug-free zone" - yeah pull the other one, luv!

1. Pressure EZ 03:41

2. 101.5 Skit 01:04

3. Last track from me..... 00:32

4. Soul Sense 00:26

5. Mad Dog Birthday Rave 00:49

6. Soundz Wicked 00:37

7. Gatsby's Hair Dressing 00:32

8. Pressure Zone 00:43

9. Ozone 2 01:15

10. 33 studio 00:38

https://modernurbanjazz.bandcamp.com/album/pressure-1015-fm-luton-pirate-memories

Special Request (Labello pt 2 - the samplige)

Ooh Macka Brown sampling the Pirates Anthem

4 Meg Soundboy with some nifty usage of "Can't turn me away" by Sylvia Striplin

Then there's Smokey Joe with a famous vocal lick

The "Special Request" vocal licks are sampled from Shut Up and Dance's "Rest In Peace" - but where did they get them from? 

Another iteration of that vocals lick - as well as another, different "special request" -  in this Reinforced tune 

Those reggae vocal licks from Smokey Joe's "Special Request" et al recur -  alongside JVC Force "Strong Island" riffs - in DJ Double G's UKG classic "Special Request" 

Ah (bit nuum nummy this) DJ Double G turns out to be DJ Gunshot as in No U Turn, making the same shift as No U Turn becoming Turn U On, but not sticking with the label

Real name Gordon Gummer, a veteran deejay on Don FM and Flex FM

a different "special request" occurs in this track - and the "special" recurs passim

A title-becomes-artist-name homage 

More Smokey Joe

nuumiest of the nuum nuum

 

Well I did not know this existed until recently  (via Pearsall at Dissensus )

An almost remake of this just-pre-nuum classic 

ooh and here's another song sampling it 

"A mind with no ceiling" (RIP Roy Ayers) (It's "Daylight" Raving Time!)

I love Roy Ayers...

But when I say that I mainly mean I love RAMP, a Roy Ayers Music Project composed of other musicians and singers, with Roy producing and co-writing the songs, mostly with Edwin Birdsong.

And when I say I love RAMP, I mainly mean "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" and the title track of their single solitary album Come Into Knowledge. 

And mainly, even more so, I love "Daylight". Love it to the bone, to the marrow.

In the main body of his work I've not found anything I like as much as this tune - which I must have played hundreds of times at this point. 

Nate White's bass alone is miraculous... those keyb chords.... the whole track glows, it's like glistening honeyed strands of sound cross-hatching and wrapping round your head.  

My gateway drug for "this kind of thing" - the less-Milesy, smoother end of fusion, where it turns into  jazz-funk - was of course jungle.  

Jungle paradoxically enabled me to build up a tolerance for this kind of mellow mystical-tinged sort of warm-glowing softness 'n' slickness - rather than the other way around.

And with "Daylight", it was this specific track that was the gateway. 

Roni Size and DJ Die and the Bristol lot did this rather often - take a slice out of a rare groove / jazz-funk tune and build up a whole track around it. 

Here's a non-Roy example: 

Which became

It's like a combination of zoom lens and time dilation - the Good Bit is so good, but also so almost thrown away in the original track, or at least rapidly left behind - the track just goes off somewhere completely different, never to return to the Good Bit... instead it develops and builds and is, you know, good-bitty all through in its own right (stellar cast of players, arranged and conducted by Bob James, in this case)  BUT, if you've heard "Music Box" first, then you can't help wondering why does it never go back to the Good Bit? You can't help pining for its return.  Sampling and looping the Good Bit speaks to our desire to arrest time, to make a golden moment last longer.

This mode of sampling and the listening mode that developed out of it - it's a sort of anti-jazz appreciation of jazz. It subverts all the propositions and principles of the original music, the very process that generates the Good Bits in the first place. The sampler chucks away the improvisation and variations around the theme: all the lyrical unfolding and "going somewhere" that happens with the melody and the chords. Instead, the sampler fixates on a isolated section that's cut out of developmental sequence: a cutting (stem is the word, they use, right, remixers -  appropriately horticultural perhaps but is that even the right term, given that there's something axiomatically inorganic about digital logic?). The isolated bit is fetishized for its textures and warm tone, a chord shift maybe, and just the exquisite lightness of touch - but it's removed from where those original human hands took it next. It becomes mechanistic - a loop. Uncanny as a GIF.  It works through flow / anti-flow.

The souljazz sample is like a plush bit of a carpet fabric, a little patch of luxury, that is excised from a larger patterned rug.  

I wonder if Roni + crew heard "Daylight" first as an element in "Bonita Applebum" by A Tribe Called Quest? (A group I've never really got into). 

Here's something I don't recall hearing before - A Guy Called Gerald versus A Guy Called Roy. 

It appears to be  the title track of The Sunshine EP from 1991 - was this ever properly released? 

3/12 update - answer provided by Ciaran in comments: 

Here's a track sampling Roy's own version of "Everybody Loves the Sunshine"  with that thin reedy ecstatic synth-line that 4 Hero and their aliases spent a lifetime chasing... 

Another external project that Roy had a hand-in as co-producer and co-writer is Sylvia Striplin, whose "You Can't Turn Me Away" is another "Daylight"-level favorite of mine. 

This has also been sampled - I think by 4 Hero (a tiny snippet of the blippety groove) and more famously by Junior M.A.F.F.I.A.

Oh and by Smokey Joe here

Great name, Striplin

She was once a member of the group Aquarian Dream....  which is very Roy Ayers-ish.

Did not know about Roy's team-up with Fela Kuti

Ah, well that's where 4 Hero got the name for their broken beat label 2000 Black, then...

Oh and then there was this team-up with the Man himself

This is where it breaks down for me, as something that holds the ear...  the sampling procedure produces the new.... but just trying to do fusion, to play like the 70s bods they revere, or play with them.... it's redundant.  It (re)covers historical ground already covered. And after peak junglizm, it can only sound like a depletion in intensity. 

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

It's funny that the transmitter of such positive vibes played as his principal instrument the vibraphone. 

The Crystl Vision

Derek Walmsley speaks in depth with DJ Crystl, one of the lost legends - discussing his production techniques and his thwarted career (signed to London, but never made an album) as well as his resurfacing with the sample-pack FUTURIZM and a remixes album. 

Derek - "What makes Crystl’s records stand out is the full-frequency attack and mesmerising detail he and his studio buddies created from that break, a bit of multi-tracking, and some reverb and delay. He could make drums sound like whirlwinds, futuristic machinery, or gamelan orchestras. The wildest fantasies of the 20th century pioneers of electronic sound – of how music could be created from noise, and how the use of everyday sounds could take music out of the concert hall and to hitherto unheard places – were realised in jungle and the music of producers such as Crystl."

Crystl on Amentalism: “It’s all sliced up completely, and then pitch-changed, and then different snares are added, and then there’s transient manipulation, and then there’s different plug ins which go on it, and then there’s parallel compression. It’s almost like making a fucking track, on one drum.....   It would be displayed over the keyboard in every little segment...  I would play physically, manually, all of my drums, all of the edit, record it in, then quantise if it needed it. It’s all hand played. I didn’t ever draw anything.”

Crystl on cartoon physics: "I make the drums animated" 

The Hertfordshire/Hardcore Continuum nexus, ahoy! - "By around 1993, he fell into making tracks for North London dance label Lucky Spin. “They were a couple of Hertfordshire brothers. And I was doing the artworks and stuff. I did the first tracks for them and carried on.”

Crystl on his creative wellspring:  “Organised chaos, in my head. I’ve got one of those very noisy brains. I find it very hard to organise myself, actually.” 

If not the One, then one of the Ones - "Warpdrive" was a track that rearranged my brain, made me see-hear how looping a break wasn't an easier option to programming a drum machine, but a new discipline, an emerging science, a field of competition.

That and the sheer violence of it - that crashing, collapsing break that first comes in at 2.24.

 

Then "Let It Roll" - incredible cut-glass breaksmanship

Here's a playlist I made that has most of Crystl's tunes in it, in more or less chronological order.

Benny L's remix of "Warpdrive" forthcoming on the remixes project

The rest of the Crystl corpus is good but doesn't quite impact to the same degree as "Warpdrive" and "Let It Roll".

This is an exciting effort

"Here is a group trying to accomplish one thing - that is, to get to the future" - Crystl uses the sample from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension  (never heard of it? me neither) before Nico and Trace do on "Amtrak"

Also nice use of a synth wash from The Black Dog's "Virtual"

Talking of expensive mainstream-movie flops of the 1980s.... now, is that a sample from the Jim Henson movie in there? 

Why yes it is!

(I once got sent to review Labyrinth - godawful it was)

"jungle" three years ahead of schedule

 

Via Droid, here's an 1989 pirate radio show on which Randall (RIP) talks about "jungle beats"  - at about 3.55 mins into this clip. 

The track playing is Renegade Soundwave's "The Phantom" - a beat later  sampled by Omni Trio for "Stronger"

One thing I've found consistently is that whenever you think you can pinpoint the moment  when a musical term or genre name gets adopted, you will always find an earlier example.... there's sort of new-word seep-backwards-through-time syndrome

It applies to almost everything

- grunge (used all through the 1980s and probably has earlier usages)

- punk 

- postpunk

- post-rock

- rave 

- poptimism

- Britpop

- rock and roll

- boogie 

- grime (well, "grimy" was used by Onyx almost a decade earlier)

And don't get me started on "techno".... 

Hell, I even found I'd coined neurofunk almost a decade earlier than when I affixed the term to a shit direction in drum and bass 

Talking of funk... they used that in the 1950s, as a specifically musical term, in the context of jazz, hard bop and that end of the spectrum. (Obviously it had other meanings - including the completely non-congruent  quaint-Brit Rudyard Kiplingesque meaning of "loss of nerve", "fearfulness" - as well as the connotatively proximate ones of body odour, sex-smell, etc) 

"Indie" is another one.... color me surprised to see it pop up twice in Nik Cohn's Awopbop:

- describing Apple Records, he says something  that started out as the grand Beatles dream of a free space for artists of all kinds, inventors, people trying to do experimental happenings, etc, but then it shrank down to being just an “indie record label”

- he talks about Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Stones, starting his own indie label Immediate Records. Admittedly quite a ways from what indie would mean after punk – although only in his early 20s still, Oldham’s immensely wealthy, a record business insider, lots of contacts, and through Immediate signs up acts many of whom have hits. Doubtless it went through major label distribution too. So indie just means there’s just one boss, the guy who founded it, calling the shots. 

That said, I would be surprised to find if anyone used the term "arsequake" prior to the, well, Arsequake League 

And I feel like "shoegaze" came out of nowhere, as did "trip hop".

The journalistic coinages seem to be more likely to emerge ex nihilo (not always though - post-rock as we know first used in 1967) whereas the ones that come from scenes and populations in an organic sort of way.... you will find more of a semantic prehistory... 

"Punk" as a word goes back to Shakespeare's time. 

Oaysis

 

Loft Conversion E.P.  - you got to love it

St Albans massive - part of the Hertfordshire Annex to the Hardcore Continuum (Omni Trio, Source Direct, Photek, Gappa G and Hypa Hypa, Omni Trio, Nookie, DJ Trax I think, others too... Moving Shadow in Stevenage, Chill Records in Luton)

Not in the first rank of ardkore + jungle - now if they were Omni level, there'd be more polemical strength to the comparison with you-know-who

But this kind of thing = the real Britpop.  I thought that then. Think it now. 

And it was pretty popular, with the populace. Chart music for a good stretch there..

This is Oaysis's first-rank moment 

"I think we've found / A special place...  Just close your eyes / And dream with me"

Better still, the Slipmatt remix

Oaysis started on Formation, up in Leicester, then went to an actual Hertfordshire label - Stevenage's Moving Shadow

One of those groups that tended to go a bit wispy when they shifted from ardkore to intelligent 

One of them  - Danny Hopkins - became Hopa, as in Hopa & Bones - a name that always tickled me.  Although I can see now that it's just a twist on Hopkins. Still, it's an archetypally nuum sort of name, isn't it? Hopa n Bones.

Hopa and Bones featuring Oaysis - a transitional nomenclature. Was this like Hopa saying to the other two in Oaysis - "okay, you can be in the room with us while me and Bones make the tune?" Like letting them down gently, aka not pulling the bandage off.  Maybe they helped, contributed, advis.

Or  maybe it was trying to drag over the "name-recognition" factor into the new enterprise.

Good stuff. Not wispy at all. Glistening and "musical" and cold-fresh-airy, yet the beats are lively and limber, the bass booms in all the right places. 

Danny Hopkins also recorded, earlier, as Higher Octave 

Track called "Raise the Bones"

The other two seem to have dropped out of music.

into thinn air (the Bachelard series 3 of ?)

A poetic conjunction - "thinn air", "pure white" 

The "thinn" suggestive of an archaic spelling, or perhaps even an unusual child's name,

It's a release by Slipmaster J, aka Justin Cohen, the owner of Lucky Spin Recordings, Dee Jay Recordings, Pure White and other labels...  a Don FM regular too

For further poeticism, one track is called "Heaven" 

And the other is "Vision"

Here's a nice tune under his alias Code Blue - with more "poetics of air" imagery: "Angels In Rhythm", "Angels in Dub"

The latter, the A-side, is unusually literal in its dubbiness

"Angels" - like heaven - connotative of elevation,  ascension, altitude.... purity... serenity... radiance... light and lightness... the ether and the ethereal... the immaterial

"If we want really to know how delicate emotions develop, the first thing to do... is to determine the extent to which they make us lighter or heavier. Their positive or negative vertical differential is what best designates their effectiveness, their psychic destiny. This, then, will be my formulation of the first principle of ascensional imagination....  all metaphors, metaphors of height, elevation, depth, sinking, and the fall are the axiomatic metaphors par excellence. Nothing explains them, and they explain everything....  These images have amazing power: they govern the dialectic of enthusiasm and anguish….  It is impossible to express moral values without reference to the vertical axis.

".... Every valorization is a verticalization"

- Gaston Bachelard, Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement

(The French title L'Air et les Songes translates as Air and Reverie, or Air and Reflections - which would be closer to Bachelard's meaning, as he is not talking about the dreams of sleep but of daydreams and  poetic contemplation

More aeriality from Justin Cohen, in collaboration with Darren Beale, as Atlas

A "second heaven" !

Not Slipmaster J / Cohen, actually an early alias of Grooverider, but on the Dee Jay Recordings label and with similar ascensional imagery:

From The Vision EP, probably the most known tune in Slipmaster's J slender uuurv is "Symphonic"

Earliest effort, with DJ Crystl 

Crystl on the remix tip, with "Angels In Dub"

Justin Cohen - a low-key figure, but clearly - especially with running those labels - a hardcore hero

 

RIP MC Duke

RIP MC Duke 

Another of those figures who moved through the UK rap scene and into hardcore rave and jungle. 

"Can't beat the system, go with the flow" - source of the famous sample as used by (fellow former Britrap cru) The Criminal Minds, on "Baptised By Dub"

 

"Educated Snares" - you gotta love that title!

Associated with Suburban Base / Boogie Times - recording, with a partner, under the name e.kude

Sample from Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men there (or perhaps impersonation)

                                                 

   Gorgeous Chaka Khan sample in there.

But before Suburban Base, MC Duke put out a couple of aliased records with Shut Up and Dance ("fast rap' turned breakbeat h-core)

Discogs bio: 

Born Anthony Mark Hilaire / Kashif Adham

Died 21 April 2024, aged 58

MC Duke got his big break when the emcee who had won the DMC MC Battle got on stage at the DMC World Championships after party and announced that he would battle anybody in the house, MC Duke got up and beat him. Derek B saw what happened and as he had just signed to Music Of Life asked Duke to meet him at the label the next day. While waiting for Derek B, Duke met the owner Simon Harris, and rapped live as he didn't have a demo, needless to say the rest is history.

Later he joined the Shut Up And Dance label and released two 12 inches with DJ Leader 1 under the name I.C.3..

He then went on to produce for Boogie Times/Suburban Base label and set up the Harddisk and Bluntly Speaking Vinyl label

Discography

Messy playlist of MC Duke under various guises and in various eras

Interesting that despite being MC Duke, he graduated from rapping in the Britcore scene to producing in the Ardkore scene and running labels, as opposed to being a rave MC.  

Check out the nifty little sample from Specials "Gangsters" - another example of the 2-Tone / Nuum connection

"Common Sensi", teehee

This E.KUD.CM stuff is good ruffstuff - clattery and jittery - and some classic vocal licks (“spread out and skiatter", "sekkle" etc)

It has taken me a ridiculous amount of time (well, a full half hour) to notice that the name E.KUD.C.M.  is MC Duke backwards. 

Fits the hardcore as hip hop turned inside out idea -  hip hop but the MC is the occasional ancillary phrase bobbing about amid the beats, and the drums are doing all the real talking.

Assassinating Rydim (Back to the Phuture)

Breaks 'n ' bleepsy bizness

From a recent comp of very early Suburban Base / Boogies Times Record stuff

Loved their tunes so long - but I've never once thought to look see who Phuture Assassins were - the name alone sufficed. 

"Long running act made famous for their ragga tinged hardcore releases on seminal UK breakbeat label Suburban Base. Originally started off as a collaboration between Dave Jay (as Dave B) and Reesh for the very first release on Boogie Times [i.e. "I Like Techno"] , the name was then passed on to Austin Reynolds who collaborated with Krome & Time for the remaining Suburban Base releases." - Discogs

That's Austin Reynolds in the middle there, with Krome & Time. 

Phuture Assassins stuck with the "future" thematic through much of the output

All excellent stuff, but true immortality for this one - the title alone and the resonances it's set off, but the madcap rub-a-dub meets Hava Nagila frolic of it. 

Vocal lick sourced in this

Flipside starts with a Pam Ayres sample about a deejay rocking the house!

Dis, dis is my CULCHA!

Lots of good tunes that don't have "future" in the title, of course

Plus stuff he did as Austin - blogged earlier here  - 

Plus engineering many - most? - all? - of the Suburban Base golden age tuneage. 

After "Roots n' Future", Austin Reynolds folded that identity - went into other ones (including the Big Beat-aligned-I-think band Soul Hooligan) but then  reactivated the name just a few years ago

"The rhetorics of temporality" 

A 2022 EP on Kniteforce, custodians of the flame.

"The long awaited Ancient & Modern from Phuture Assassins is finally in hand and due for release on the 3rd of August. If you have heard Luna-C play live at an event this past year or so, or SupaSets 21 & 22, then you would of heard a couple of these tracks already but Austin really shows what the early days of Rave was all about with this insane double vinyl release. All inclusive and not afraid to try things. This is rave meets jungle meets industrial meets sitar music, an instrument that Austin actually plays himself."

Sitar!

For Kniteforce, Austin also ruffed up this Jonny L classic

And indeed another EP for Kniteforce - Babylon Newspaper

From a few years ago, Austin Reynolds interviewed by Vinyl Junkie

"I was brought up in a house with a piano. I don’t remember where I learnt it from but I started playing simple boogie woogie 12 bar stuff aged 7 or 8.  I Picked up the guitar as a teenager and did bands and gigs while at school.  You can blame Alan Suger for my recording career... one day an ad for the Amstrad Studio 100 appeared on the telly, it was a four track studio and record player combined that came with headphones, a tape of drum beats and four microphones. Myself and friends started recording as a ska band, badly named The Janitors. It happened to include Kevin Beber (D-Zone/Toxic) on drum machine. Surprisingly I was offered a record deal off the back of the tapes, but couldn’t commit to a touring schedule while I was busy failing my A levels.  These were my first dabbling’s"....

[More evidence for the 2-Tone / nuum nexus - as is his comment below from elsewhere in the VJ interview]

".... the complete set of 2-tone singles I call ‘my precious’" 

Who do you see as your major influences in music and why?

"Jerry Dammers - King Tubby - Motown - Studio 1 - Nick Drake - Ginger Baker.  From the rave scene.. ‘The Scientist’ (The original keyboard wiz in the studio at Kicking Records, he also engineered SB001) The Rebel MC. Longsy D. Shut up and Dance. Rob Playford and The Meat Beat Manifesto." 

"Early releases Shot Like Dis, Please Don’t Stand In My Way and I Get High were recorded in my bedroom at my family home. One session was attended by SB founder Dan Donnelly, myself, both of M&M and my mum on the hoover. My equipment was then moved into Dan’s Mum’s garage where I began recording with DJs and other musicians for the label at what is known as Sub Base Studio’s."  

"... One PA that stands out was my first one, an appearance as Phuture Assassins at the Eclipse in Coventry. I remember the unforgettable and overpowering smell of Vicks Vapour Rub, topless dudes on platforms covered in the stuff, smoke and lasers."  

Some people say you are the unsung hero of hardcore and that you are one of the innovators of this sound...

To be honest there were so many talented people in the rave scene in those days and so much we copied off them or owe to them.  It’s easy to say ‘Yeh I did the first this or that, but it’s a bit narcissistic.  No one really invented anything. It was all the people, clubs, records labels and technology, it was collaborative.

Scenius ahoy!

But modesty aside, Austin Reynolds certainly warrants the term "hardcore hero". 

Fave tunes of AR's according to the Vinyl Junkie interview 

 

the full circumference

 

Some kind of peak for jungle music

the ruff and the smooth, frenzy and elegance 

"big up all ghetto youth" versus silky wafting sounds like the EZ-listening that makes Harry Flowers say "turn it up, I like that tune"

jazzual menace, dubby flickers, "Think" palsy, soundtrackism 

future + retro 

somewhere between Size + Die "11.55" and Kruder & Dorfmeister

I don't know much at all about Hidden Agenda, but I recently saw this Melody Maker mini-feature go up at Nothingelseon

From Newcastle, of course. Gateshead, to be precise. 

The "cutting up grooves" rather than "cutting up breaks' bit is interesting.

"Is It Love?" came out in mid-1995

There was another year or so of great things - "Metropolis", the first run of No U Turn, the Full Cycle camp - and then something broke decisively

Seemed like everything became

ruff and nothing but (jump-up)

or

smooth and nothing but (liquid funk)

or 

anxious and itchy with sci-fi technicality (neuro) 

tracks that had "the full circumference" within them - the ruff, the smooth, the futuroid, the technical, the dark -  all within that one track - became vanishingly rare 

As for Hidden Agenda... never quite taken by anything else they did, to the same extent anyway. 

Always felt like they were one of the outfits who should have done a proper album.

Actually, checking, it appears they did. In 2000. With the wry title Whatever Happened To... that seems to acknowledge having missed their moment, taken too bleedin' long

Unless it's a Tynesiders nod to this beloved Britcom

"the only thing to look forward to / the past"

Ah well, certainly they liked to play up the Tyneside thing - naming a track after Get Carter, after all

Sadly one of the Goodings brothers passed in 2016 (Mark) - but it appears the other (Jason) has reactivated the name Hidden Agenda in the last few years and put out some more tunes.