new-old-kore

 https://soundcloud.com/sonicrampage/memories-of-the-parazone-parallax-album-promo-mix

Man like Pearsall he say: 

"On July 1st 2021 my good friend Vali NME Click is dropping the pre-orders for the epic 'Message from the Parazone' on @parallaxrecordings, a monster four disc album featuring the best and brightest artists from the modern breakbeat hardcore / jungle scene. To celebrate this momentous event, Vali asked me to put together a retrospective of the label so far, so I've come up with this mix, which picks out at least one track from each of the releases so far, covering both the old skool re-releases as well as the new skool exclusives. Enjoy!"

taste for the compilation:

https://parallaxrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/departure-to-the-parazone

"Eyes to the horizon...it´s getting closer! This is the 12" sampler that will advance the 4x12" 'Message To The Parazone' album to celebrate the 5th birthday and 10th release of Parallax Recordings.

"The 4-tracker gives an insight into what to expect from the album and offers a wide range of styles: It opens with the dark and mystic 170-groover 'Horizons' by ScanOne. It´s followed by the raw, dubby, Amen-led Dead Man´s Chest Remix of 'Rhodiola'. Originally part of the Subaquatic EP by Tim Reaper it was a collabo with dutch Yorobi and is turning heads in various sets at the moment. On the flip InnerCore slaps us with 'Turbo Sound', an alarming ravey Hardcore beast that will make you jump off your seat and bust shapes in your bedroom. The dark lord FX rounds off the EP in his trademark dark style that only he can do so easily. 'Dark Shadows' is a pitch-black monster with racing, relentless Amens and the evilest mentasms. You don´t want to miss this. "

phin 'n' games (don't fear the reaper)

Got into a nice discussion about the philosophical issues pertaining to "new old skool" with major exponent-proponent Tim Reaper  and Pete Devnull over at the Retromania blog, in the comments after this post....  (Third Form from Dissensus also chipping in with some unusual angles)

Tim and Pete were kind enough to point me in the direction of superior examples of the form

And I must say this chap Phineus II does blast away my hackles

It's like a perfect combo of the period-precise replication so uncanny it's like time-travel, but with a degree of intricacy that befits this obsessive-compulsive age. 

As Pete says: 

"it's jungle, classic sounding jungle, made on Amigas and Akais with 90s synths and nothing that would tip you off to it being made 25 years later. But the level of detail to the tracks is just so intense, you'd be hard pressed to find many (any?) actual 93-95s release with that amount of work. People simply didn't have time to do all that back then, since the scene was changing so fast. They didn't have 10,12,15, however many years Mikey [Phineus II] has been doing this to really dig into a particular style, figure out all the rules, and then cheekily start messing with them. At the same time, it still has that 100% rugged bedroom studio feel to it, not some overpolished aseptic "mastery" of a genre." 

mashing up history

check the slogan on the label of this version of the original Jem 77 tune -
"Proper Bloodclaart Pirate Radio Bizness"




this other recent Rave 2 the Grave tune is better than the Jem 77/Cubic 22 one I think



of course there were tracks that were effectively mash-ups  -  aka rip-offs - happening in real-time back in the old skool days. i can't think of any examples off the top, but there were quite a few that were composites of existing killer tunes.

This Mickeybeam75 chappie is slinging this kind of thing up there, along with a lot of high-quality uploads of original-era tunes

this one - not a mash up but a new-old tune -  is quite devastating, beats and bass-wise. really like it




Here's the whole Wetman  EP on Vivid



Funny title

This is an earlier EP by Wetman

when the old sounds newer than the new

two philosophically suspect but undeniable banging tunes from Pearsall's mix of "new old skool"



mix-rationale in full here

excerpts

"If we’re honest, most of the tracks on this mix betray precisely no influence from musical developments of the last 20+ years, something that, to me, brings up many interesting questions.

"This is because the original hardcore rave sound arose in a musical, social and political context that is very different from the one we experience today, a whole confluence of events that cannot be recreated. It also can’t be ignored that the scene was like a huge hive mind focused on relentless change and innovation – the speed of change was breathtaking, and probably without much parallel in recent musical history....

"So it’s an interesting paradox with tracks like the ones I’ve selected for this mix, in that they are very consciously imitating a moment in time when musicians were desperately trying not to imitate, but to innovate and to keep progressing. It’s a bit like modern guitar bands still reaching for that classic garage punk sound, in a sense.

"But the question is: does it matter? If the music sounds good, if it is fun and gets people dancing, who cares if it was made in 1992 in a studio in Hertfordshire stacked high with primitive synths and samplers or in 2018 in a bedroom in the Netherlands on a laptop loaded with soft synths?

I guess for me it doesn’t really matter. (Otherwise I wouldn’t be spending so much money buying this stuff on vinyl, duh).

And I don’t think it really matters for the artists or labels, either – sometimes music is just there to be enjoyed, so maybe I should shut up, stop overthinking things, and have some fun, right?"