Blissed Out Breakbeat Hardcore!

The subtitle of this compilation could hardly push my personal buttons more!

Good compilation too - a surprising number of tunes I'd not heard before

1. Sleepwalker - Age of Aquarius (L.D remix)

2. Hedgehog Affair - Parameters

3. DJ Mayhem - Inesse 07:53

4. Luxury - Twirl

5. The Invisible Man - The Flute Tune

6. Escape - Escape (The Optical Mix)

7. Skanna - This Way

8. Xray Xperiments - Techcore

It's the work of Sam Purcell, the man behind the label Blank Mind, whose previous releases include a reissue of Earth Linkage Trip's Psychotronic EP. 

Release rationale for Lost Paradise:

With an intrigue for a particular niche of old UK hardcore which takes cues from Sheffield bleep ambience, heady rave futurism and soft, almost new age synth pads, Blank Mind presents ‘Lost Paradise: Blissed Out Hardcore 91-94’. Though the records gathered for the compilation span a short three-year period and bridge the gap between scenes, the collection manages to find a sweet spot where the influence of Warp’s Artificial Intelligence, back room chill out sonics and the nascent jungle boom meet with elements of Italian piano house and slower breakbeat cuts.

Opting to focus on atmosphere to highlight shared connections; in this case the duality of often serene and calming soundscapes with frenzied breaks and bass (see Hedgehog Affair’s ‘Parameters’ and Luxury’s ‘Twirl’ respectively); Lost Paradise is a formidable collection of tracks plucked from a thriving time for British dance music experimentation. The general themes of ascension and escapism channelled through digital samplers are also inescapably linked to a turbulent time in politics, beginning in the post-Thatcher years and culminating in the year the harshest anti-rave Criminal Justice Act came into force.

Initially building the compilation around DJ Mayhem’s track ‘Inesse’, Blank Mind label founder Sam Purcell and Amsterdam based producer Tammo Hesselink began a process of swapping favourites and deep cuts to spread across this 2x12” doublepack. The compilation avoids any obvious centrepieces through masterful sequencing, allowing for moments of refrain and tempo changes in a way that helps add to their overall vision of what this music is and can be; “We wanted to frame hardcore in a different light, looking at this idea of ecstasy through the traditional meaning of the word and exploring that symbolism”. By drawing from what some might consider the softer edges of the movement, the pair offer a look into the relevance of these tracks in the contemporary era, where the past years have seen both an explosion in popularity of old ambient/new-age music and a certified jungle revival. 

Releases March 25, 2024

Preorder it here

'auntological 'ardcore?

their maker Sam Purcell (of Blank Mind Records), interviewed here, says: 

"I’m really obsessive about dance music, and yknow I kinda want to hear everything! It had become an addiction, I would access a certain period or style for the first time and get all hyped – and then when I’ve binged on that I’ll just move on and get into something else… All this eventually led me backwards towards hardcore, which was a really pivotal time in shaping electronic music in the UK – …And, that music just completely hit the sweet spot yknow. I was hooked, it’s such a rich tapestry to tap into. I was listening to Fabio & Dr S Gachet sets, discovering Moving shadow, Production House – tonnes of stuff. I loved the immediacy of the music, the functional rhythms, cheesy sped up samples, the weird FX – the rush. You can hear how everyone was so pilled up, and it’s a really interesting pocket of time which is kind of lost on my generation. I was really inspired, I love the wide eyed sincerity of it all and that feeds into the tracks for sure. There’s also an element of lament, looking back on a time when music was such a different thing. Raves really were pilgrimages, and you would have to listen in to the radio show, or dig through crates or go to raves in order to hear this music you love so much – and that effort makes the music a much more personal and rewarding thing. You might hear a track just one time, and that memory – informed by the context, your mood that moment, that soundsystem all constitute that experience, and it’s special."

he further says of current conditions of listening: "the concerns I have is that we can become saturated from over listening as we are constantly faced with so much choice and instant access. The problem with this is that I think it means that we are often listening to music on a lower level, or more impatiently – also it means that music becomes closely connected with screen and website type interfaces. Personally speaking, I listen to music in a more impatient way when I am listening via the internet or iTunes – due to cyber interfaces, e.g. timelines, tabbed browsing etc. Accordingly it’s had a positive influence in allowing people to discover music that you would otherwise be unaware of, and I have it to thank for discovering the music that has brought about the first two releases. Distinctions between eras and contexts are kind of blurring, Kodwo Eshun used the term ‘intimate distance’ to describe this – and I think it’s a really nice term, we feel very closely connected to things which maybe geographically or temporally are far removed. So, as with most things it’s a bit of a double edged sword that you need to be able to navigate. You need to impose limits as to not get overwhelmed by all the information"

more tunes under his DANCE moniker are in this realnice mix of his presented at Inhabit

INHABIT MIX 020 %u2013 DANCE by Inhabit-Online on Mixcloud