[ ...a nation still dreaming ]

subnation > scottie
is it either the kids of today or the (still happy) hardcore heads of yesterday standing behind the current reiteration of the rinsin' sound of 1993? or is it simply the idm community finally waking up, ten years late, smelling the coffee and getting a reality check on what has really played a major part in formulating the soundscapes that matter today?

well, anyhow, zoom back 10 years. ray keith, originating from colchester, over to london. mashup frequencies, hijacking soundwaves. regenerating perilous subcurrents, flooding the underground with subliminal drum patterns. drum'n'bass selection vol 1. still fresh, it's like yesterday but today.

wagon christ > bend over
originally released on the 2001 receiver ep (ninja tune), absorb hq fave luke vibert here made himself so ridiculously lush he sunk down the studio comfy chair almost losing himself to a seductively dreary take on elevator music. but only almost. make a cup of tea, have some crisps or sarnies or other choice british food, immerse yourself in the prodigiously anglomaniac antics of this bearded messenger.

with the current album sorry i make you lush (2004), wagon christ once again reestablishes himself as an english-bred jean jacques perrey of the noughties, letting his freak flag fly.

bocca juniors > raise (63 steps to heaven)
the essence of balearic? an all-british sturm-und-drang for house music, around the early years of the burgeoning 90s? or not more than yet another record collector's wet dream?

being one of andrew weatherall's absolutely first releases, bocca juniors' "raise" (1990) fits snugly between the musty tie-dye of emf's "unbelievable" and the ambitious d.i.y. of mr fingers' early classics. pivotal for the glorious days of madchester, acid house and britpop, tracks like these sometimes seem deliberately forgotten in these days of (check the similarity) chilean click-house, death disco and glitch\pop. am i right? do you see what i mean or am i simply becoming not more than a precocious incarnation of bill drummond here, talking to a wall of laptop-tronica geeks with shorter sense of history than an akufen record?

freeez > iou / southern freeez
brit-funk. what does that word sound like to you? or what about this: brit-disco. and to take it a step further, ponder on this for a sec: brit-electro.

back in the days before these islands had a funk identity completely of its own (believe it or not but there actually was such a time), producer/musician john rocca and a few mates recorded a quite prolific 12" on uk label beggars banquet. lead female vocals were by ingrid mansfield-allman and the track was "southern freeez" (1981). sequencing their disco with a detouched sense of cool it's easy to draw a straight line from freeeze all the way into the twilight zone of kerrier district and metro area. class.

one year later, freeez made it really big thanks to production efforts from arthur baker and the genially simple "iou". with the subsequent, similarly novelty-based triumphs like malcolm mclaren's "buffalo gals" (1982), newtrament's "london bridge is falling down" (1983), the all-british edition of the street sounds lp series, bomb the bass's "beat dis" (1988), and everything thereafter, the word "british" put in front of the word "electro" suddenly started making sense, even when used without the suffix "-pop".

sabres of paradise > wilmot
kids need enlightenment. what is a musical mission at present caught up in fairly claustrophobic electro funk and rockabilly skank once used to be obsessed with more open spaces and emotionally drenched dub sensibilities. yes, i'm talking about andy weatherall again.

"wilmot" (1994) ties back to those things that make up indispensable parts of london's past. stretch via the melancholy of dub syndicate and on-u sound, to horace andy, eek-a-mouse, soundsystem culture in ladbroke grove and lewisham, to calypso out of broken transistors in council flat kitchens, and you've tapped the pulse on the heritage running through this city. "wilmot" is the summary, the logical conclusion – 70 years of music history merged into one track, older than your granddad!

photek > kjz
apparenty, the legendary "kjz", off photek's hidden camera ep (1996), is named after rupert parkes hearing kirk degiorgio's abstract jazz and thereafter scoring his tribute "kirk's jazz".

maybe this is just one of those sketchy stories that tie in to the grand narrative of drum'n'bass and adds to the anecdotal knowledge that slowly make history (to put it pretentiously). like the story of dj randall playing innerzone orchestra's "bug in the bassbin" at high pitch down at legendary drum'n'bass night speed off charing cross road in london, this is another one.

whatever which, "kjz" is the ringing reminder that jazz can never be taken out of account, and furthermore, can't be imitated or faked. either you've got it or you don't. and, moreover, this includes knowing how to keep it sparse as well as when to burn on full flame. full stop.

attica blues > 3ree (a means to be)
speaking of jazz, this might be the best urban, british post-modern rendition of a jazz-funk classic ever. on james mason's classic album, rhythm of life (1977), "free" is a standout track. a generation later (1997), attica blues reshapes it, with mid-nineties drum programming and roba's deep vocals that made the band stand out from the very onset of their short existence.

whereas the antipop consortium remix adds scooploads of magical confusion to the 12", the as one remix by kirk degiorgio pays homage in a simple and gentle way through adding a raw bassline sampled straight from the very james mason album where the tune originally was found. smartness, sincerity, and humbleness, all on one black circle of vinyl.

shy fx > bambaata / funksta
ebony black exorcism on vinyl, this fairly late release (1997) by drum'n'bass godfather shy fx preceded just about everything we know today about grime, sublow, dubstep, or whatever you want to call it. in my book, it's either these two tracks or dj zinc's "138 trek" that did the job to finally bridge between the grimmest dominions of hardcore drum'n'bass and the rhythmical aesthetics of both 2 step and dancehall – and consequently, the blueprint for today's most prolific sounds was sketched out.

djs: this is an end-of-the-night track. don't attempt to rush it into your set; intense music as this is a sonic weapon. use it wisely.

spacek > eve
can't think of a more unique band, a more unique song. taken from this south london trio's underrated and absolutely stunning debut lp curvatia (2001), singer and producer steve spacek, morgan zarate and edmund cavill let their creativity work in unpredictable ways; "eve" had its origin in the producers playing around with a snippet of the word "believe", which, shortened down, made better sense in the context of the song, hungrily yearning and at the same time sexually confident as it is.

american site junkmedia.org writes: "[spacek] typifies a long-standing british impulse to synthesize, adjust, and defy the conventions of black music from america and the caribbean." i want to add a second element into that equation: spacek's music is british also in its almost pastoral, earthy feel. a warm, forgiving sound, offering sweet respite and laden with escapism and humanism. spacek embarks somewhere inbetween tindersticks, nicolette, the orb, curtis mayfield, and, say, matt deighton, yet more purist, more hi-tech, and more soulful. someone called them the radiohead of soul music; maybe that makes sense, judge for yourself.

autechre > lowride
the roots of rob brown's and sean booth's audio technology research are easy to forget the further the duo reaches, release for release, into total abstraction. knowing how indebted their early stuff (from more than ten years ago now) is to classic electro helps to understand the still repetitive nature of their music. with "lowride", autechre rendered their own, somewhat distanced version of gang starr's "dj premier in deep concentration". listen to it today and be amazed how sublime and promising this is – seen from 10 years' distance, this track gets a different sheen, in the light of what unfolded thereafter.

/ jonas andersson