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Sci-Clone - Red Fever / Everywhere I Go (Remix) - 19-May-08 02:16 PM
A-Sides' Everywhere I Go, recorded under his Sci-Clone guise glides along on crisp-yet-crunching snares, jazzy organ stabs and Nathan Haines' saxophone playing, but, despite these elements, it is far from an 'intelligent' track. The atmospherics and organ notes fluctuate from high to low giving the track elements of euphoria, gravity and soul almost in a rebuke to the increasingly tech-style drum and bass releases of the period. This track was showcased on the Metalheadz compilation Platinum Breakz 03.

T.Power - Turquoise / Mutant Jazz - 19-May-08 01:56 PM
Dance music history is littered with 'seminal' tracks. Instances where producers and musicians have employed something borrowed or something new. In the case of the DJ Trace's remix of T Power's Mutant Jazz, the something borrowed adage is well documented with the added firmament of creating something new. The track starts off as a minimalist rolling tune with chopped up beats, breaks and atmospherics; bass isn't introduced until 1:33. The coup de grace, and the element that gives the track its seminal status is the gargantuan distorted 'Reese' bass sound which kicks in at 2:35, looping in and out of the track from thereon in. The introduction of this component became the yardstick for future techstep releases (it is the backbone of No U-Turn's Torque compilation of 1997) and served to crystallise techstep as a new and important subgenre within drum and bass.

Chameleon, The* - Links - 13-Jul-06 06:11 AM
"I've said it before and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast; you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it". A classic sample, taken from Matthew Broderick's end monologue to camera at the end of the 1986 film 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' kicks off Chameleon's 'Links'; a track that was included on Bukem's seminal 'Logical Progression' album. Although described in many quarters as an 'intelligent' track, 'Links' rides along on a bumpy-yet-funky Amen break, interspersed with male vocal 'Woaah' stabs.

Various - Drum & Bass Selection 1 - 24-Jun-06 04:30 AM
This release was the first to showcase (and name check) a new style of music that emerged from the ashes of rave and had mutated from the Darkcore subgenre. Whereas the latter eschewed the helium vocals and "toytown" samples (lovingly embraced by the nascent Happy Hardcore scene), the compliation title hints at the focus of the tracks in this compilation and where a newer style of music was moving towards. The tracklisting is chronological, with the link from Darkcore to D & B highlighted by the first three tracks - 'The Dark Stranger', the beat-driven 'Warpdrive', and the Uncle 22 remix. We are treated to the rapid machine-gun beats of Subnation's 'Scottie' and the Mad P-sampling 'The Way' along the way, but the overiding focus of the compilation is the emergence of the reggae/ragga vocal sample, showcased by at least two-thirds of the tracks here. The highlights however, are the two releases that do not rely on either the 'dark' or ragga vocal notions, namely 'Spiritual Aura' and 'Music Box'. Perhaps it is credit to the (reputation of the) producers involved, but these tracks still sound as fresh as they did back in 1993/94.

New Order - The John Peel Sessions - 21-Apr-05 09:22 AM
Joy Division were heavily championed by the late great BBC Radio DJ John Peel, so it was unsurprising that he invited the three remaining members to record Peel Sessions for him in their new guise. This CD collates the two sessions recorded in January 1981 and June 1982. The first four tracks, recorded in the first session, would later appear on the 'Movement' album - New Order's first - and gave the first glimpse of the band stepping out of Joy Division's shadow. There are of course, likeminded nods to their past; 'Dreams Never End' in particular has an eerie structural similarity to the popular 'Ceremony'. But the last four tracks are recorded post-'Temptation', and see the band finally moving in their own direction. '5-8-6' is an odd precursoral prototype to 'Blue Monday' and 'Turn The Heater On' is a captivating revamp of Keith Hudson's reggae standard.

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