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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (25 ratings)

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Blame - A21 / Sikological Hostage - 20-Oct-09 03:07 PM
I've just sold my copy of this record and thought I'd give it one quick listen before I posted it out to its new owner. Having always been a fan of both tunes, it struck me that it's not rated particularly highly here on discogs, nor does it seem to have appreciated in value alongside Moving Shadow tunes of the same era. Both tunes to me are slickly produced examples of the 'dark' side of breakbeat hardcore. A21 utilises two Run DMC breakbeats very cleverly, delaying the samples to make the beats more hectic. It also uses a bizarre orchestral / film sample for the main breakdown, which alongside the timestretched breakbeats and other eerie sounds reminds me a little of Amon Tobin - however this predates his work by quite a few years. Both A21 and Sikological Hostage utilise a "Reese" style bass noise, a good year before this sound was popularised in D by Ray Keith & Nookie (Renegade - Terrorist). While it's not actually a sample of the Reese tune, it's a very similar bass pad and has the same chilling effect. Sikological Hostage is a similarly dark piece of music, riding along nicely on a sampled loop from The Orb's Ever Growing Pulsating Brain tune. I appreciate that neither of these are particularly big club tunes, but musically to me they stand up against the best of the year's releases, and they're so much better than much of the lack-lustre, commercial sounding drum & bass that Blame has released of late.