Few midweek picks from me, consider them an early Christmas present. Couple of old school jungle and hardcore picks, a bit of hi-NRG ghettotech and a classic mix from London head L-Vis 1990 to finish things off.
First up Alex Eagan (aka one half of Skull Juice, Astronomer and promoter for High Horse and Bloggers Delight) is on remix duties for Woolf's debut single Stand (out on Young & Lost Club Jan 18th). Alex flips the LCD Soundsystem influenced crooner's tune on it's side, taking Woolf's soul influences as startpoint - and combining the rolling guitar line with a great squelchy bassline.)
Next up UK grime producer Swindle goes in on a different tip on classic grime track Zumpi Hunter. Terror and Swindle are producing together soon, and it's obvious why - both take the rude colour inherent in grime and combine it with the colour that has gripped the 'W**nky' scene so much this year. This definitely sounds more like a track from aforementioned scene than a grime one, but many of that scene's greatest tracks this year have had more in common with grime than what is labelled as dubstep in your local club (Rustie's Bad Science, Joker's Purple City, Starkey's Gutter Music VIP), a fact that has led to many of these tunes being labelled 'proto-grime'. Anyway, enough over analytical stuff has been said about grime this week (see Dan Hancox's twitter - Dan linked this article, which charts the rise of the East in finance and business, with sinogrime, and heralds sinogrime as "cultural prophecy"). While I'm all for over analysing music (See Kode 9's recent 6 page epic interview in Wire mag here), this seems a bit of a stretch to me. Nothing wrong with the tunes though!
Classic hardcore tune from Jonny L - hopefully gonna be posting a lot more of this kind of stuff on the blog, and this is 1992 joint is a great variation on the standard 'ardkore' template - the classic piano stab breakdown is on a completely different tip than most hardcore tunes, and the use of vocal samples owes more to baltimore club than 'ardkore'
Talking of music of the hardcore variant, Goldie's Inner City Life is more of a jungle one, but still an absolute classic. Sbtrkt takes the tune to a new level, with jittery 2step rhythms tracing the hardcore continuum to it's logical conclusion. Dunno why the tune has been labelled as Timeless all over the internet - it's definitely Inner City Life as far as I can hear, although my relative ignorance over jungle means there may be another Goldie track called Timeless that has similar vocals. Enlighten me if I've got it wrong.
Next up Joker takes the new Riton & Primary 1 track Radiates and pulls of the Joker magic yet again. This makes me all the more excited for Joker's Tron, and the upcoming Joker LP. Definitely one of those 'colourful' tracks in dubstep this year.
Marvy Da Pimp takes this Major Lazer tune to it's logical conclusion - playing on Diplo's love for ghettotech, he turns out a massive ghettotech tune with an insistent drumbeat that is enough to get anyone's foot tapping.
Last up Night Slugs resident L-Vis puts together a mix showcasing a different side to his usual club sets - a mix of classic house tracks from the 80s 90s and Noughties, pulling tracks from Chicago, Detroit and every other corner of the house spectrum.
the opening track of Goldie's first LP, Timeless, was called Timeless, an epic 21 minutes long and was a mix of tunes - Inner City Life, Pressure and Jah...
ReplyDeleteenlightened!
Ah I see - will have to try and get hold of that LP!
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