le hardcore ne mourra jamais

Break out your Harraps French-English Dictionaries - unless of course you are Francophone already - in readiness for the release in a week or so of Hardcore, a collation of my writings on the hardcore continuum, published exquisitely by Audimat Editions and translated by the fearless Jean-François Caro.

(Ha, I just realised that if you say "Hardcore" in French, it sounds phonetically as ardkore - my preferred demotic rendering). 

Below is the release rationale, en Français: 

Jungle, ambient jungle, techstep, speed garage, darkcore, grime, dubstep, funky… Depuis le début des années 1990, une série de styles musicaux s’est répandue du Royaume-Uni jusqu’aux dancefloors du monde entier. Ces musiques électroniques ont pris forme autour d’une passion pour la basse, les breakbeats, les sonorités issues du dancehall et le fracas des samples d’orchestre. Alimentées par les drogues (ecstasy, kétamine) et longtemps indissociables des radios pirates, elles composent ce que le critique britannique Simon Reynolds (Rétromania, Le choc du glam) a nommé le « continuum hardcore », pour mieux insister sur leur histoire commune. Dans ce livre, Reynolds revient sur ses propres expériences pour nous faire (re)découvrir une foule de maxis et de morceaux légendaires ou oubliés. Il revendique leur radicalité contre le mépris de classe, écoute les rapports féminin/masculin se transformer au cœur des infrabasses, et les réinscrit dans les trajectoires de la diaspora anglo-jamaïcaine et le multiculturalisme anglais. Avec son écriture à haute intensité, entre essai et reportage, cette anthologie inédite constitue un hommage sensible à l’énergie de la rave ainsi qu’un manifeste en prise sur l’innovation et la catharsis des dancefloors, à l’heure où les sonorités hardcore reviennent exorciser l’« anxiété généralisée » d’un capitalisme passé en mode turbo.

Vous pouvez acheter le livre ici

                                                        "Massif de Londres!"

                                                 "Big up ta poitrine Georges Kelly!"

Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996 Vol. 1

Luke Owen of Death Is Not The End has just today released a new volume in his compilation series collecting pirate radio ads from the '90s. Here's my blurb for Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996 Vol. 1.

 "Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced “a pause for the cause”, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing through the immense number of pirate radio sets archived on the internet.  Sometimes the tracklists would note “ad break” or “ads”, helping to narrow the search. But often I’d just stumble on a bunch in the middle of a pirate show preserved on YouTube or an old skool blog.  A few of my original unintended “saves” and latterday “finds” are included in this wonderful collection by audio archaeologist Luke Owen. It’s the latest in his series of compilations of UK pirate radio advertisements, with this volume focusing on the audio equivalent of the rave flyer: MCs breathlessly hyping a club night or upcoming rave, listing the lineup of deejays and MCs, boasting about hi-tech attractions like lasers and projections, mentioning prices and nearest landmarks to the venue, and occasionally promising “clean toilets” and “tight but polite security” (“sensible security” is another variation). Some of these ads are etched into my brain as lividly as the classic hardcore and jungle tunes of that time. (Most rave ads incorporate snippets of current music, of course – big anthems and obscure “mystery tracks” alike).   Names of deejays ring out like mythological figures: who were Shaggy & Breeze, Kieran the Herbalist, Tinrib, Food Junkie?  Putting on my serious hat for a moment, I think these ads are valuable deposits of sociocultural data, capturing the hustling energy of an underground micro-economy in which promoters, deejays and MCs competed for a larger slice of the raving audience.   But mostly, they are hard hits of pure nostalgic pleasure, amusing and thrilling through their blend of period charm, endearing amateurism,  and contagiously manic excitement about rave music’s forward-surge into an unknown future. The best of these ads give me a memory-rush to rival the top tunes and MC routines of the era."    

Here hear -  and buy - Pause for the Cause, which is available digitally and as a limited-edition cassette. 

Death Is Not The End has a regular NTS Radio show and this Sunday Luke will be playing a batch of radio ads not on the new compilation (including a few more of mine). It broadcasts at 8pm GMT on Sunday 10 July, then will be available on the archive via this link sometime early next week.

One of my contributions to Pause for the Cause. 

Here's my Guardian piece from last year on the first two collections of UK pirate radio adverts that Death Is Not The End put out. 

And here's a longer interview I did with Luke about his label and the interest in pirate radio transmissions.

Since then Death Is Not The End has out a collection of a different era of pirate radio - Brooklyn Pirates: Neighbourhoods in the Sky, 2014-2021 - compiled by David Goren, an audio archivist based in Brooklyn. 

V4 Visions

I was invited to write a liner note for a compilation of South London label V4 Visions, who operated at the confluence of sound system soul, house, jungle, and swingbeat, releasing a compact but lustrous body of work across only a few years of the early '90s, which has now received the deluxe reissue treatment from Numero Group. 

It was a really fun and interesting assignment, as the biographical arcs and journeys-through-music of the collective's core four (Alex Palmer, Chris Forbes, Nick Austin, Julian Ashaye) transected just about every significant Black British sound + scene from the late '70s through to the '90s: lover's rock, jazz-funk, street soul, hip hop, funki dred, pirate radio, reggae sound systems,  you name it.  I'm not sure if they took me up on it, but I did suggest a map might be a useful supplement to the text, given the profusion of bygone club locations mentioned as well as specific neighbourhoods of London. I was surprised also by just how many famous-to-be names the V4 Visions boys rubbed shoulders with back in the day.  

 

The anthology - V4 Visions: Of Love & Androids - is out now and you can hear the tunes at the Numero Group bandcamp, where it is also purchasable in digital form. The vinyl edition is still available at the Numero Group website. 

 

we'll be back after the ads

Observant readers of these blogs may have noticed my burgeoning interest in the adverts that punctuated the shows on hardcore jungle pirate radio stations. I've been combing through my own tapes (cursing the preponderance of recordings where I pressed pause when the ad break started) and  trawling through sets that are online. The best adverts are distilled slivers of vibe and scene-character, and contain genuine sociohistorical interest. But mostly their nutty nonsense and DIY charm gives me a delicious memory-rush. 

So I was well chuffed to come across a fellow obsessive in Luke Owen, the man behind the archival audio label Death Is Not The End. In the last month or so, Luke has put out London Pirate Radio Adverts, 1984-1993 Vol. 1 and the just-released London Pirate Radio Adverts, 1984-1993 Vol. 2 - both of which are available digitally at a name-your-price rate and for a modest amount as a limited-edition cassette or in CD form. 

Here is my piece for The Guardian  on the compilations, featuring quotes from Luke,  pirate radio historian Stephen Hebditch, and DJ/producer Nick Power who played on Pulse FM and other pirates, and who made one of my favorite ads for his own record store Music Power Records (it can be found on the Vol. 1 compilation).

In a week or so I'll run the full chat with Luke about his project, which I hope will continue. 

And do check out Luke's earlier collection from last year of sound snippets from the Bristol pirate radioscape of the late 90s. 

Three of my favorite pirate ads. 

                                           

The chap who voiced those Telepathy ads (there's a whole series of them running through the entire era) was called Sting and he was the founder of Club Telepathy and also owner-operator of Deja Vu FM. 

Back to Nick Power - as a producer, with DJ Ku - who worked as an assistant in Music Power Records -  he made these little beauties 

                                            

His label Ruff Tuff  & Wicked Stuff also put this minor classic out:

And this little piss-taker

                                        

In addition to his DJing and retail mini-empire (two records shops and store selling disco and sound system equipment), Power - being of Greek-Cypriot background - also pioneered clubbing in Ayia Napa, long before it became a UK Garage destination. 

big up all haunty cru

A festive mix from the Man like Ian Hodgson, reminding me I've been remiss in not proclaiming the existence of a new Moon Wiring Club album, Psychedelic Spirit Show, which arrived at its customary time of year a few weeks ago and is ruddy excellent.



PSS ventures further down the marshy path towards total entropy - sunken grooves, gappy beats, wilting tones, voices like flickery lantern-lit faces receding into foggy formlessness.

Even though PSS doesn't sound anything like it, the origins of the album lie in a just-for-fun exercise in making "drum & bass / jungle / raveish / whathaveyou tunes", Ian informs. The resulting 25 or so tracks  - never intended for release, designed merely as a "meditational vibe / head-space cleaner process" - then became the mulch out of which grew a completely other project.  Approaching the source material as if doing a mix, Ian took bits from one track and put them together with bits from different tracks. "I split each track into 3 sections ~ rhythm / melody / effects (voice samples and that) then applied numerous knackering techniques and filters, and began to construct whole new shonky-hybrid tunes overlaying a melody from one track with the rhythm of another.  I called this process (wait for it) ‘unconscious compositioning’ -  a way to distance myself from the predictable choices that you inevitably make when composing music for a number of years, and then being able to surprise myself with choices I wouldn’t wholly ever have made."

Less loftily, Ian also described the manky making of the album as "a bit like getting the dust out of an antique carpet with one of those wicker tennis racquet carpet beaters".

In an analogy that really couldn't be further up my alley,  Ian further describes the final sequenced album as reminding him of  "a car tape I had in the 90s. On one side was Grooverider The Prototype Years and on the other a selection of 60s/70s light entertainment tunes. If you imagine that tape festering in a glove compartment for 20 years until both sides play together simultaneously at the wrong speed..."

The Dream Perception Machine mix is also splendid seasonal stuff with a loose "Psychedelic Telly" thematic. In an apt time-twisty metaphor, Ian describes the contents as "retroactive inspirations" - the kind of stuff that could have informed the making of the album, except they didn't.

Psychedelic Spirit Show, incidentally, is a vinyl-only release, purchasable here (UK), here (Europe), or here (rest of world). 

But - breaking with customary seasonal release rhythms - there looks likely to be a Moon Wiring Club compact disc in the spring. 

RIP Tango

Tango interviewed by Droid five years ago and written up for Blog To the Old Skool 
















three years of nuumvolution across three remixes - 91 - 92 - 93








on the ones and twos with Ratty

lord of the universe

Acen's "River Deep, Mountain High" *

The second-best version:



The best of the rest










The best version again - i.e. the first video, the one at the top with the amazing female dancers - the "Monolythikmaniak Mix"  - only this time without the annoying hiss and the abrupt too early cut-off



* in the earlier Blissblog post I nominate "Window in the Sky (Kingdom of Light Mix)" as the 300th best hardcore tune of all time (this being an unfinished, indeed barely started project - the #300 tune entry was the only installment of it, I'm ashamed to admit).  Having already planned for "Trip to the Moon" to be #1 (ah, but which mix, which mix, eh?), and "Close Your Eyes" at #150, the circularity would place Acen Razvi at the centre of the Canon, its spine). 

At that point I'm not sure I'd heard the "Monolythikmaniak Mix" - or if I had, it hadn't really registered with me - but if I was to re-embark on that lunatic List, I'd be placing that mix high, much nearer the top. Which would mean that "Window in the Sky" appeared twice. (Not a unique occurrence, actually - three, possibly four, mixes of "Renegade Snares" would have to feature, obviously...  and at least two of "Open Your Mind").  

Somewhat unusually - given rave's general tendency towards the purely sonic, its downgrading of the visual component in pop's audiovisuality - this was a dance track whose glory was opened up for me by that promo video when I came across it a few years ago. (Who knew there were actually a fair number of rave promos made back in the day?) . Above all  it was those astounding dancers....  the chaste frenzy of their movements transmitting and incarnating the sheer ambush of rave -  its "something new under the sun" quality -  just as forcefully as Acen's beats and vamps. 

new steps of change

"Uncredited female vocal sample in 'Horizons' is Maya Angelou reading from her poem 'On The Pulse Of Morning', at the inauguration of former US President Bill Clinton (01/1993)"