Chapter Four
’Ardkore, You Know the Score
85 records, in the order the book names them
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001
The Theme
Unique 3
If one record can be said to have trailblazed the floorquaking sub-bass style of Northern house, it’s Unique 3’s 1989 track ‘The Theme’.
Ten Recordstrack Open ↗ YouTube -
002
Weight For the Bass
Unique 3
The Bradford boys’ next release, the Top Thirty cracking ‘Weight For the Bass’, was even more spartan than ‘Theme’.
Ten Recordstrack Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Track With No Name
Forgemasters
The tune’s title, ‘Track With No Name’, stridently affirmed the house scene’s radical anonymity (another crucial element of the hardcore ethos).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Testone
Sweet Exorcist
This sine-wave sub-bass can be heard on the third Warp release, ‘Testone’ by Sweet Exorcist (Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard Kirk and DJ Parrot).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
005
Dextrous
Nightmares On Wax
That was when we knew we’d got it right.’ With Warp’s second release, Nightmares On Wax’s ‘Dextrous’, Beckett says ‘we had to put out the Quiet Bass Mix, ’cos we couldn’t physically cut the Loud Bass Mix’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
006
Aftermath
Nightmares On Wax
Nightmares On Wax, the Leeds-based black/white duo of Kevin Harper and George Evelyn, also recorded the all-time Warp classic ‘Aftermath’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
007
Feel It
Coco Steel and Lovebomb
Coco Steel and Lovebomb’s 1992 Warp release ‘Feel It’ – bleep-and-bass’s twilight anthem – is an unofficial sequel to ‘Aftermath’: there’s the same hair-raising, stalking vibe and twitchy, staccato feel, but the diva’s distress is replaced by curt dominatrix injunctions to ‘fee-eee-eee-eel it’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
008
LFO
LFO
‘Aftermath’ peaked at Number Thirty-eight in the UK Chart in the autumn of 1990; a few months earlier, Warp had scored two simultaneous Top Twenty hits with LFO’s ultra-minimal, robot-voiced ‘LFO’ and Tricky Disco’s chirpy, cartoon-tekno outing ‘Tricky Disco’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
009
Tricky Disco
Tricky Disco
‘Aftermath’ peaked at Number Thirty-eight in the UK Chart in the autumn of 1990; a few months earlier, Warp had scored two simultaneous Top Twenty hits with LFO’s ultra-minimal, robot-voiced ‘LFO’ and Tricky Disco’s chirpy, cartoon-tekno outing ‘Tricky Disco’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
010
Frequencies
LFO
LFO saved the label by recording the highly successful long-player Frequencies – not just the definitive bleep-and-bass record, but one of the dozen or so truly great albums the electronic dance genre has yet produced.
Warp; Tommy Boyalbum Open ↗ YouTube -
011
What Is House
LFO
Strangely, no figures from old skool hip hop feature in the roll-call of illustrious forefathers on ‘What Is House’, the title track of LFO’s brilliant late 1991 EP – instead, it’s acid house gods Phuture, Mr Fingers and Adonis, and Euro-synth pioneers Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk who get props from a slurred, distorted voice oddly reminiscent of Mark E. Smith.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
012
Pressure
Ability II
Outside the Warp fraternity, there was a legion of independently released bleep-and-bass classics: Ability Il’s ‘Pressure’, F-X-U’s ‘The Chase’, Hi-Ryze’s ‘Ride The Rhythm’, Autonation’s ‘Crosswires’, Ubik’s ‘System Overload’ EP. Even Detroit-aligned Network got on the case, putting out Forgemasters’ awesomely inorganic ‘Stress’ (sounds so shiny, sibilant and serrated they seem to lacerate the ear-drum), along with insidiously catchy yet utterly unmelodic tracks by Rhythmatic like ‘Frequency’ and ‘Take Me Back’.
Outer Rhythmtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
013
Stress
Forgemasters
Outside the Warp fraternity, there was a legion of independently released bleep-and-bass classics: Ability Il’s ‘Pressure’, F-X-U’s ‘The Chase’, Hi-Ryze’s ‘Ride The Rhythm’, Autonation’s ‘Crosswires’, Ubik’s ‘System Overload’ EP. Even Detroit-aligned Network got on the case, putting out Forgemasters’ awesomely inorganic ‘Stress’ (sounds so shiny, sibilant and serrated they seem to lacerate the ear-drum), along with insidiously catchy yet utterly unmelodic tracks by Rhythmatic like ‘Frequency’ and ‘Take Me Back’.
Networktrack Open ↗ YouTube -
014
Frequency
Rhythmatic
Outside the Warp fraternity, there was a legion of independently released bleep-and-bass classics: Ability Il’s ‘Pressure’, F-X-U’s ‘The Chase’, Hi-Ryze’s ‘Ride The Rhythm’, Autonation’s ‘Crosswires’, Ubik’s ‘System Overload’ EP. Even Detroit-aligned Network got on the case, putting out Forgemasters’ awesomely inorganic ‘Stress’ (sounds so shiny, sibilant and serrated they seem to lacerate the ear-drum), along with insidiously catchy yet utterly unmelodic tracks by Rhythmatic like ‘Frequency’ and ‘Take Me Back’.
Networktrack Open ↗ YouTube -
015
Take Me Back
Rhythmatic
Outside the Warp fraternity, there was a legion of independently released bleep-and-bass classics: Ability Il’s ‘Pressure’, F-X-U’s ‘The Chase’, Hi-Ryze’s ‘Ride The Rhythm’, Autonation’s ‘Crosswires’, Ubik’s ‘System Overload’ EP. Even Detroit-aligned Network got on the case, putting out Forgemasters’ awesomely inorganic ‘Stress’ (sounds so shiny, sibilant and serrated they seem to lacerate the ear-drum), along with insidiously catchy yet utterly unmelodic tracks by Rhythmatic like ‘Frequency’ and ‘Take Me Back’.
Networktrack Open ↗ YouTube -
016
Chime
Orbital
Knocked out in their attic studio at the brothers’ home in Sevenoaks, a London commuter belt town, Orbital’s debut ‘Chime’ cost virtually nothing to make but got to Number Seventeen in the UK charts.
OhZone/ffrrtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
017
Strings of Life
Derrick May
The British ‘Strings of Life’, ‘Chime’ sounds at once urgent and serene, capturing the classic Ecstasy sensation of sublime suspension, of being stuck on an endless pre-orgasmic plateau.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
018
The Sun Rising
The Beloved
Pivoting around the same eight-note sequence of psalmic female vocal – sampled from A Feather on the Breath of God: Sequences and Hymns by the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen – stolen by The Beloved for ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘Belfast’ always make me think of Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, with its guardian angels who invisibly bring succour to the anguished.
WEAtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
019
Derek Went Mad
Shut Up And Dance
Alongside anti-racism polemic (‘White White World’), urban vigilante rage (‘This Town Needs A Sheriff’) and survivalist determination (‘Derek Went Mad’, with its ghostly sample of a fragile male voice whispering ‘but I’ll return a stronger man’), there were tracks like ‘£10 To Get In’, a jibe at rip-off raves.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
020
Autobiography of a Crackhead
Shut Up And Dance
They bemoaned London’s escalating crack problem on their Top Fifty hit ‘Autobiography of a Crackhead’ and its flipside ‘The Green Man’, a stirring, string-swept instrumental named after a Hackney pub notorious for its open drug-dealing.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
021
The Green Man
Shut Up And Dance
They bemoaned London’s escalating crack problem on their Top Fifty hit ‘Autobiography of a Crackhead’ and its flipside ‘The Green Man’, a stirring, string-swept instrumental named after a Hackney pub notorious for its open drug-dealing.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
022
Raving I’m Raving
(feat. Peter Bouncer)
And their biggest hit, ‘Raving I’m Raving’, targeted Ecstasy.
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023
Dance Before The Police Come!
Shut Up And Dance
With their looped-breaks-and-uncleared-samples aesthetic, their roots in hip hop and reggae’s sound-system culture, their ambivalence about Ecstasy, and their street survivalist politics (on the cover of their debut album, Dance Before The Police Come!, they struck kung fu poses, barechested, oiled and musclebound), Shut Up And Dance laid the groundwork for jungle, the subculture that would evolve out of breakbeat hardcore.
album Open ↗ YouTube -
024
Illegal Gunshot
Ragga Twins
On tracks like ‘Illegal Gunshot’, ‘Hooligan 69’, ‘Spliff-head’, ‘Wipe The Needle’, and the awesome ‘Mixed Truth’, The Ragga Twins mashed up ruff B-boy breaks, uproarious dancehall reggae chatter and Euro-techno terror-riffs with results that uncannily prophesized the ragga-influenced jungle sound of 1994.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
025
Hooligan 69
Ragga Twins
On tracks like ‘Illegal Gunshot’, ‘Hooligan 69’, ‘Spliff-head’, ‘Wipe The Needle’, and the awesome ‘Mixed Truth’, The Ragga Twins mashed up ruff B-boy breaks, uproarious dancehall reggae chatter and Euro-techno terror-riffs with results that uncannily prophesized the ragga-influenced jungle sound of 1994.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
026
Wipe The Needle
Ragga Twins
On tracks like ‘Illegal Gunshot’, ‘Hooligan 69’, ‘Spliff-head’, ‘Wipe The Needle’, and the awesome ‘Mixed Truth’, The Ragga Twins mashed up ruff B-boy breaks, uproarious dancehall reggae chatter and Euro-techno terror-riffs with results that uncannily prophesized the ragga-influenced jungle sound of 1994.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
027
Mixed Truth
Ragga Twins
On tracks like ‘Illegal Gunshot’, ‘Hooligan 69’, ‘Spliff-head’, ‘Wipe The Needle’, and the awesome ‘Mixed Truth’, The Ragga Twins mashed up ruff B-boy breaks, uproarious dancehall reggae chatter and Euro-techno terror-riffs with results that uncannily prophesized the ragga-influenced jungle sound of 1994.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
028
Belgian Resistance
World Power Alliance
Groups as geographically distant as Detroit’s Underground Resistance and Dollis Hill’s Manix paid tribute to the mysterious Lowlands nation: UR put out the ‘Belgian Resistance’ single, Manix recorded the track ‘Never Been To Belgium’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
029
Never Been To Belgium
Manix
Groups as geographically distant as Detroit’s Underground Resistance and Dollis Hill’s Manix paid tribute to the mysterious Lowlands nation: UR put out the ‘Belgian Resistance’ single, Manix recorded the track ‘Never Been To Belgium’.
Reinforcedtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
030
Energy Flash
Beltram
First, with 1990’s ‘Energy Flash’, which gets my vote as the greatest techno track of all time.
R&Strack Open ↗ YouTube -
031
Mentasm
Second Phase
The title of Beltram’s second genre-revolutionizing classic, 1991’s ‘Mentasm’, could be a synonym for another Iggy trope: the ‘O-mind’, a paradoxical state of hyper-alert oblivion in which self-aggrandizement and self-annihilation fuse.
Outer Rhythm/R&Strack Open ↗ YouTube -
032
The Omen (Psycho Mix)
Beltram/Program 2
It’s very psychedelic, but not in the bell-bottom, flower power way.’ On the Beltram/Program 2 collaboration ‘The Omen (Psycho Mix)’, he actually sampled Robert Plant’s languishing screams and orgasmic whimpers from the weird ‘ambient’ mid-section of ‘Whole Lotta Love’.
R&S/Order To Dancetrack Open ↗ YouTube -
033
Acid Rock
Rhythm Device (F. De Wulf)
Belgium was very, very advanced.’ Indeed, the first real Euro-hardcore track, Rhythm Device’s ‘Acid Rock’, saw producer Frank De Wulf independently hit upon the same techno-as-heavy-metal idea as Beltram: the track imitated Deep Purple’s monster-riffing dirge ‘Smoke On the Water’.
Music Mantrack Open ↗ YouTube -
034
Fairy Dust
Set Up System
Set Up System’s ‘Fairy Dust’ (the title probably refers to amphetamine) featured a fingernails-on-a-blackboard scree-riff that sounded like a brain-eraser wiping the slate of consciousness clean.
Big Timetrack Open ↗ YouTube -
035
Anasthasia
T99
On T99’s ‘Anasthasia’, the ‘Mentasm’ stab mutated into what some called the ‘Belgian hoover’ effect: bombastic blasts of ungodly dissonance that sounded like Carmina Burana sung by a choir of satan-worshipping cyborgs.
Who's That Beat/XLtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
036
Night In Motion
Cubic 22
With its corrugated, rock-like riffs and stomping beats, tracks like Cubic 22’s ‘Night In Motion’ seemed to sever house’s familial ties to disco and black R & B. Belgian and German hardcore was heavily influenced by the late eighties school of Euro Body Music (EBM), with its stiff, regimented rhythms and aerobic triumphalism.
Big Time Internationaltrack Open ↗ YouTube -
037
James Brown Is Dead
L.A Style
LA Style’s massive hit ‘James Brown Is Dead’ seemed like a gloating celebration of hardcore’s Teutonic funklessness; the track’s Sturm und Drang fanfares and cavernous production (geared for massive raves in industrial hangars) imparted an unnervingly Nuremberg-like vibe.
XYZ Records; Aristatrack Open ↗ YouTube -
038
Horsepower
Ravesignal III
Hence Ravesignal’s ‘Mindwar’ and ‘Horsepower’, the awesome creations of R & S producer CJ Bolland.
R&S EPtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
039
Dominator
Human Resource
That’s very much the vibe exuded by Human Resource’s Euro-hardcore classic ‘Dominator’, on which the rapper’s boasts of ruffer-than-ruff invincibility climax with the Lacanian epiphany: ‘In other words, sucker, there is no Other / I wanna kiss myself.’ Taking the mentasmic drone to its nether limit, ‘Dominator’ is simultaneously sluggish and palsied; you feel like your nerve-endings have gone dead, but beneath the armature of numbed flesh, your heart’s beating furiously.
R&S/Order To Dancetrack Open ↗ YouTube -
040
Rave Alarm
Praga Khan
This was the panic-rush, as celebrated in tracks like Praga Khan’s ‘Rave Alarm’, HHFD’s ‘Start The Panic’, John +Julie’s ‘Red Alert’ and Force Mass Motion’s ‘Feel The Panic’; an edgy, jittery exhilaration caused by the metabolic acceleration and paranoiac side-effects of doing too much Ecstasy and amphetamine.
Beat Boxtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
041
A Word Of Science
Nightmares On Wax
NOW’s debut album A Word Of Science largely abandoned bleeps and clonks in favour of mellow ‘smoker’s delight’ grooves influenced by seventies funk.
album Open ↗ YouTube -
042
Hardcore You Know the Score
Church of Ecstasy
Recording as Industrial High and The Hypnotist, Pound specialized in Nietzschean grandiosity (tracks like ‘God of the Universe’, ‘A Modern Prometheus’) and rabble-rousing anthems (‘Hardcore You Know the Score’ and ‘Night of the Living E-heads’, which rallied a legion of zombie-warriors with the battle cry ‘Hardkore will never die!’).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
043
Circles (Vicious Mix)
John + Julie
Wells and Newman’s pinnacle was their John + Julie track ‘Circles (Vicious Mix)’.
XLtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
044
The Exorcist
The Scientist (DJ Hype)
From the headbanging riffs to the imagery of madness, mass rally and Satanism (Messiah’s ‘You’re Going Insane’ and ‘20,000 Hardcore Members’, The Scientist’s ‘The Exorcist’), Kickin’ really were ‘heavy metal house’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
045
Evil Surrounds Us
Wishdokta
Wishdokta’s ‘Evil Surrounds Us’ actually sampled Axl Rose’s gloating screech – ‘D’ya know where you are?!?’ – from Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, while Messiah were eventually signed by Rick Rubin’s hard rock label, American.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
046
40 Miles
Congress
Some, like Congress’s ‘40 Miles’, cracked the Top Twenty; many got within spitting distance (Manix’s ‘Oblivion’ EP, Rhythm Section’s ‘Midsummer Madness’ EP); most remained underground anthems.
Nushtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
047
Homicide
Shades of Rhythm
Peterborough’s Shades of Rhythm – a DJ crew who’d started out throwing illegal parties in the summer of 1989 – debuted impressively with the sinister, twitchy double A-side ‘Homicide’ /‘Exorcist’, but were rapidly reduced to glossy rave-fodder like ‘Sweet Sensation’, ‘The Sound of Eden’ and ‘Extacy’ (a big hit in November ’91).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
048
Exorcist
Shades of Rhythm
Peterborough’s Shades of Rhythm – a DJ crew who’d started out throwing illegal parties in the summer of 1989 – debuted impressively with the sinister, twitchy double A-side ‘Homicide’ /‘Exorcist’, but were rapidly reduced to glossy rave-fodder like ‘Sweet Sensation’, ‘The Sound of Eden’ and ‘Extacy’ (a big hit in November ’91).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
049
The Sound of Eden
Shades of Rhythm
Peterborough’s Shades of Rhythm – a DJ crew who’d started out throwing illegal parties in the summer of 1989 – debuted impressively with the sinister, twitchy double A-side ‘Homicide’ /‘Exorcist’, but were rapidly reduced to glossy rave-fodder like ‘Sweet Sensation’, ‘The Sound of Eden’ and ‘Extacy’ (a big hit in November ’91).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
050
Extacy
Shades of Rhythm
Peterborough’s Shades of Rhythm – a DJ crew who’d started out throwing illegal parties in the summer of 1989 – debuted impressively with the sinister, twitchy double A-side ‘Homicide’ /‘Exorcist’, but were rapidly reduced to glossy rave-fodder like ‘Sweet Sensation’, ‘The Sound of Eden’ and ‘Extacy’ (a big hit in November ’91).
track Open ↗ YouTube -
051
Adrenalin
N-Joi
Essex’s N-Joi made the Top Thirty earlier that year with ‘Adrenalin’, a track that begins with the sound of crowd uproar; played live, it triggered a feedback loop, as the raving massive respond to what they believe is their own excitement.
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052
Mindflux
N-Joi
Tracks like ‘Mindflux’ and ‘Anthem’ (Number Eight in April 1991) and the ‘live techno’ EP ‘Live In Manchester’ were populist rave at its most functional, all chugging, fartacious B-lines, whistle sounds and crowd-rousing appeals.
all Deconstructiontrack Open ↗ YouTube -
053
Anthem
N-Joi
Tracks like ‘Mindflux’ and ‘Anthem’ (Number Eight in April 1991) and the ‘live techno’ EP ‘Live In Manchester’ were populist rave at its most functional, all chugging, fartacious B-lines, whistle sounds and crowd-rousing appeals.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
054
Everybody In The Place
The Prodigy
The Prodigy’s ‘Everybody In The Place’ reached Number Two in January, and was kept from the top spot only by the re-release of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
all XLtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
055
On A Ragga Tip
SL2
SL2’s proto-jungle smash ‘On A Ragga Tip’ got to Number Two, as did Shut Up and Dance’s ‘Raving I’m Raving’.
both XLtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
056
Activ-8
Altern 8
In Slade’s case, this was to accentuate their hooligan image (‘Cum On Feel the Noize’, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ et al), whereas Altern 8 merely sustained the visual pun of their name with track titles like ‘Activ-8’, ‘Hypnotic St-8’, ‘Brutal-8-E’, ‘E-Vapor-8’, ad nauseam.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
057
Infiltrate 202
Altern 8
Their early tracks ‘Infiltrate 202’ and ‘Frequency’ were crudely exciting, in a lumpen, lowest-common-denominator way.
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058
Full On: Mask Hysteria
Altern 8
But by the time their debut album/greatest-hits-package Full On: Mask Hysteria came out in the last months of 1992, Altern 8 were already forgotten, like so many teenybopper bands before them.
all Networkalbum Open ↗ YouTube -
059
Charly
The Prodigy
Prodigy 1991 chart smashes ‘Charly’ and ‘Everybody In The Place’ are all teenage rampage and sublimely vacant insurgency.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
060
G-Force
X-101
This was music whose only subject was its own sensations; hence self-reflexive titles like ‘Hyperspeed’, ‘Wind It Up’, ‘Everybody In The Place (Fairground Mix)’, ‘Full Throttle’, ‘G-Force’.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
061
Experience
The Prodigy
Following three Top Five hits in a little over a year, The Prodigy’s late 1992 debut album Experience was everything that Altern 8’s Full On: Mask Hysteria failed to be: a commercial success, and an album you could listen to all the way through (as opposed to a patchy collection of the hits-so-far).
XL; Elektraalbum Open ↗ YouTube -
062
Fire
Noise Factory
‘Ruff In The Jungle Bizness’ namechecked the emergent sub-genre of ‘jungalistic ’ardkore’, while ‘Fire’ buried a sniggery E reference deep in the mix: a sample of an uncouth youth blurting ‘and you’re rushing!!!!’
track Open ↗ YouTube -
063
A Trip to Trumpton
Urban Hype
Urban Hype’s ‘A Trip to Trumpton’ (featuring the famous ‘Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb’ sample from a ‘Watch With Mother’ sixties TV programme) got to Number Six, while Smart E’s ‘Sesame’s Treet’ (schoolkids chorusing the ‘Sesame’s Street’ theme, dodgy E-as-candy puns) reached Number 2.
Faze-2 Recordstrack Open ↗ YouTube -
064
Sesame’s Treet
Smart E's
Urban Hype’s ‘A Trip to Trumpton’ (featuring the famous ‘Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb’ sample from a ‘Watch With Mother’ sixties TV programme) got to Number Six, while Smart E’s ‘Sesame’s Treet’ (schoolkids chorusing the ‘Sesame’s Street’ theme, dodgy E-as-candy puns) reached Number 2.
Suburban Basetrack Open ↗ YouTube -
065
Trip II The Moon
Acen
In August 1992, Acen’s brilliant ‘Trip II The Moon’ peaked at Number Thirty-eight, while 2 Bad Mice’s ‘Hold It Down/Waremouse’ stumbled just outside the Top Forty.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
066
Let Me Be Your Fantasy
Baby D
It would be two years before hardcore’s next real hit, when the rereleased ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ by Baby D, would be carried all the way to Number One by a powerful current of rave nostalgia.
album Open ↗ YouTube -
067
Ebeneezer Goode
The Shamen
In the meantime, The Shamen’s own Number One ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ confirmed the sense that rave had turned into a joke.
One Little Indian/Epictrack Open ↗ YouTube -
068
Some Justice
Urban Shakedown
Urban Shakedown’s ‘Some Justice’, a Top Thirty hit in June 1992, is a classic example: chopped-up, ricochetting breaks, a seismic undertow of sinewave bass, and a monster-riff pulsating in a Morse Code pattern.
both MCGtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
069
Space Cakes
Kaotic Chemistry
In 1992, it seemed like there were thousands of underground anthems based around the Morse Code oscillator-riff: DJs Unite’s ‘DJs Unite’, Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘Space Cakes’, Weekend Rush’s ‘Desire’, Timelapse’s ‘Sued For A Sample’, Sonz of A Loop Da Loop Era’s ‘Peace and Loveism’, to name but a handful.
Krome & Time Remixtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
070
Desire
Dica & DJ Big Vern
In 1992, it seemed like there were thousands of underground anthems based around the Morse Code oscillator-riff: DJs Unite’s ‘DJs Unite’, Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘Space Cakes’, Weekend Rush’s ‘Desire’, Timelapse’s ‘Sued For A Sample’, Sonz of A Loop Da Loop Era’s ‘Peace and Loveism’, to name but a handful.
Boogie Beattrack Open ↗ YouTube -
071
Sued For A Sample
Timelapse
In 1992, it seemed like there were thousands of underground anthems based around the Morse Code oscillator-riff: DJs Unite’s ‘DJs Unite’, Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘Space Cakes’, Weekend Rush’s ‘Desire’, Timelapse’s ‘Sued For A Sample’, Sonz of A Loop Da Loop Era’s ‘Peace and Loveism’, to name but a handful.
Out of Romfordtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
072
The Headhunter
4 Hero
On the back-cover of 4 Hero’s late 1991 EP ‘The Headhunter’, there’s a cartoon, drawn by the band’s Dego McFarlane, that testifies to an anxiety about ‘ ’ardkore’s ever-escalating beats-per-minute.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
073
You Got To Slow Down
Tek 9
DJs were crankin’ tunes up to +8 using the pitch-adjust control on their turntables; serious speedfreaks went further, doctoring the variable resistor inside the Technics decks which controls the pitch-adjust, thereby enabling the turntable to go to +20 or higher. ’Ardkore was hurtling into the unknown, going faster than anyone had ever gone before, and all because of the malign drug/tech logic of amphetamine and speed-cut E. Using his alter-ego Tek 9, Dego McFarlane released ‘You Got To Slow Down’, a sort of speeding ticket to a scene that was seriously overdoing the stimulants, the song pivoting around a soul-diva sample that leaps up the octaves until it’s a helium-shrill shriek.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
074
Sub Dub
DJ Seduction
I’m thinking of tracks like NRG’s ‘I Need Your Lovin”, which made the hardest of hearts melt to that hideously soppy Korgis’ ballad ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometimes’, or the Payback track that transformed the EastEnders theme into a John Cage urban-gamelan percussion piece, or DJ Seduction’s ‘Sub Dub’, which sampled folk-rock maiden Maddy Prior’s dulcet-toned reverie of walking through ‘rushes and through briars’ to a field where ‘lambs do sport and play’.
Impacttrack Open ↗ YouTube -
075
My Mind
Noise Factory
Tracks like ‘My Mind’, ‘Futoroid’, ‘Breakage #4’, ‘Survival’ and ‘Straight From the Bedroom’ were haywire contraptions of jittery breaks, mad noises, and grainy, low-resolution samples: ruff-cut patches of orchestral arrangement, dislocated shrieks of ambiguously pitched diva-bliss, plaintive roots reggae incantations and dancehall ragga chants.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
076
Breakage #4
Noise Factory
Tracks like ‘My Mind’, ‘Futoroid’, ‘Breakage #4’, ‘Survival’ and ‘Straight From the Bedroom’ were haywire contraptions of jittery breaks, mad noises, and grainy, low-resolution samples: ruff-cut patches of orchestral arrangement, dislocated shrieks of ambiguously pitched diva-bliss, plaintive roots reggae incantations and dancehall ragga chants.
all 3rd Partytrack Open ↗ YouTube -
077
Survival
Foul Play
Tracks like ‘My Mind’, ‘Futoroid’, ‘Breakage #4’, ‘Survival’ and ‘Straight From the Bedroom’ were haywire contraptions of jittery breaks, mad noises, and grainy, low-resolution samples: ruff-cut patches of orchestral arrangement, dislocated shrieks of ambiguously pitched diva-bliss, plaintive roots reggae incantations and dancehall ragga chants.
Obliviontrack Open ↗ YouTube -
078
The Bouncer
Kicks Like A Mule
What’ve you done, turned it into a roller-disco?!?’ Kicks Like A Mule’s Top Ten hit ‘The Bouncer’, with its tersely intransigent bouncer samples of ‘not tonight, you’re not coming in’, provoked Bodysnatch’s answer record ‘Revenge Of The Punter’: a litany of murderous malevolence (‘now you’re taking liberties’, ‘step to this, if you wanna be done’) synched up to fitful death-funk rhythms.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
079
Revenge Of The Punter
Bodysnatch
What’ve you done, turned it into a roller-disco?!?’ Kicks Like A Mule’s Top Ten hit ‘The Bouncer’, with its tersely intransigent bouncer samples of ‘not tonight, you’re not coming in’, provoked Bodysnatch’s answer record ‘Revenge Of The Punter’: a litany of murderous malevolence (‘now you’re taking liberties’, ‘step to this, if you wanna be done’) synched up to fitful death-funk rhythms.
Big Citytrack Open ↗ YouTube -
080
I Like It
Landlord
Both were oriented around the riff: in the sixties, there were a million variations on ‘Train Kept A Rollin’ ’ or ‘You Really Got Me’, in the early nineties, a myriad takes on the ‘Mentasm’ stab or on the Morse Code riff first heard on Landlord’s ‘I Like It’ and Todd Terry’s CLS classic ‘Can You Feel It’.
ffrrtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
081
Can You Feel It
Mr Fingers
Both were oriented around the riff: in the sixties, there were a million variations on ‘Train Kept A Rollin’ ’ or ‘You Really Got Me’, in the early nineties, a myriad takes on the ‘Mentasm’ stab or on the Morse Code riff first heard on Landlord’s ‘I Like It’ and Todd Terry’s CLS classic ‘Can You Feel It’.
Traxtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
082
Bad Girl
Bad Girl
The greatest Ibiza track of all, Bad Girl’s ‘Bad Girl’, features a sped-up she-sprite sing-songing a playground paean to ‘ ’erb an’ weed, weed an’ ganja, ganja an’ weed, an’ ’erb an’ marijuana’, her prepubescent voice lurking amidst a grotto of globular bass-goo. 2 Bad Mice’s ‘Drumscare’ starts with a looped entreaty – ‘E-wanna-E-wanna-E-wanna-E-wanna-E’ – that sounds like a spoilt child demanding sweeties.
Ibizatrack Open ↗ YouTube -
083
Ivory
Skin Up
This was emblazoned in sniggery double-entendres like Skin Up’s ‘Ivory’, with its ‘give us an E please, Bob’ sample from Blockbuster, a TV game-show based around spelling out words, or Lenny D Ice’s ‘We Are I.E.’, which sampled an African chant and turned it into an affirmation of collective identity through MDMA. But the drugginess is also brazenly apparent in the sound of ’ardkore, the way the music seemed to bypass the aesthetic faculties and take effect by direct neurological interface.
track Open ↗ YouTube -
084
We Are I.E.
Lenny D Ice
This was emblazoned in sniggery double-entendres like Skin Up’s ‘Ivory’, with its ‘give us an E please, Bob’ sample from Blockbuster, a TV game-show based around spelling out words, or Lenny D Ice’s ‘We Are I.E.’, which sampled an African chant and turned it into an affirmation of collective identity through MDMA. But the drugginess is also brazenly apparent in the sound of ’ardkore, the way the music seemed to bypass the aesthetic faculties and take effect by direct neurological interface.
De Undergroundtrack Open ↗ YouTube -
085
Rush In The House
Xenophobia
As the chorus of Xenophobia’s ‘Rush In The House’ put it, ‘E come alive E come alive E come alive’. ’Ardkore’s speedfreaks were literally rushing away from their problems, and who could really blame them?
track Open ↗ YouTube
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