Energy Flash

Thursday, January 24, 2019

watch ya bass bins

sometimes i think this crazy archival (ardkival, even) culture of ours has gone a bit far, stripping the mystery a little as the frontiers of non-knowledge get pushed back further and further, everything documented and annotated and mapped - tidied up

but then on t'other hand, it is kinda cool that someone at The Ransom Note has dug up the story behind the voice that goes "watch ya bass bins i'm tellin ya" on Altern-8's "Infiltrate 202"

Turns out they they it sampled from a Sheffield pirate radio station - not necessarily this particular show, but this station - SRC aka Sheffield community Radio, which then became Fantasy FM - and this deejay duo, Astrix & Space

i went a-lookin' on account of this wikkid UKG tune that Cardrossmaniac2 dropped earlier this week

which doesn't as far as i can tell actually feature the vocal bit from Chris Duckenfield (aka Astrix - he also worked for Warp in the shop and various other functions)

just a folk memory allusion, maybe, or simply a perennially applicable warning! (you got bass bins, you better watch 'em)

the oil-slick noxious B-line on the G.O.D. tune made me think of another Sheffield connection - a later temple of bass boom - Niche

see, it's all connected... there's these threads... there's a word for it, it's on the tip of my tongue...

Astrix & Space i.e. Duckenfield and partner Richard Benson pop up here actually remixing "Infiltrate 202" !

other remixes, one by an illustrious name but not really lustrous

Ah Duckenfield and Benson it seems were RAC, a Warp act whose name rings a faint bell (stands for Richard And Chris)

That would qualify as late bleep maybe - from 92

And this is arguably very late bleep - from 1994

The sound getting a bit clean and fiddly by this point - not a great need to be keeping a watchful eye on those bass bins anymore

Yeah bleep to bassline via UKG - that would be the better line to follow

Monday, January 21, 2019

Never Lost His Dreams

23 years old!

god bless whomsoever playeth that synth lick that come in at about 3.48 - sublime wisp of wistful melody cycling sensuously around and around and around

and god bless Lyn Eden

this selection triggered by the tunes Cardrossmaniac2 be dropping

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

well, how nuum nuum nummy is that - 50 percent of Smokin Beats = Neil Rumney, aka N.R.G., as in "I Need Your Lovin'" and "He Never Lost His Hardcore".

i did not know that when i started this little post - just now idly checked discogs - you learn something every day, even an accredited historian of the subject such as moi

Rumney's pedigree goes back to the bleep era, his first tunes are on Chill Records

Although this debut from 1991 is more like breaks 'n' bleeps

and hark ye! it's got one of the same samples as the more famous later "Terminator", as well as near enough the same title

it's Rufige Cru who'll do a much better job with the samples from the movie and sonically live up to the lethal promise of the title

flipside to "Never Lost His Hardcore" - but it's not that ruff in all honesty

back to Smokin Beats

he / they seem to have switched back over to house 'n' g as early as 1994

a LOT of releases

bit daunting, i don't have the heart for a proper delve - perhaps someone else can tell me if there's anything as magic as "Dreams" in there?

odd, the proximity of N.R.G. to N'n'G, another UK garage outfit helmed by an old hardcore vet (Grant Nelson)

if Neil R had stuck with N.R.G. as his UKG alias, then the scene would have had an N.R.G. and an N'n'G - causing all kinds of name confusion

these are the thought-phantoms that beguile the brain of a nuumologist late at night