"I actually deejayed Geeta's birthday at Sub-Tonic at the weekend (clashing with Kode 9 who was playing a few blocks away) and did a 1990 set (cos that was when she first got into music seriously), played some 'Baggy' (One Dove, Stone Roses) but it was mostly Bleep -- you would have enjoyed it, inept mixing aside! -- and then I went from Warp/Unique 3, etc straight into Loefah's 'Bombay Squad' and Skream's 'Request Line' (thought I'd merk Kode 9 !) . The crowd (slight exaggeration) really dug it, heavy sub-dub presha."
Cool! Wish I'd been there to witness it. One of the things I found when assembling the tracks for my dj set was that, once you get past 'Warp/Unique 3', it's actually quite difficult to find other truly great, timeless Bleep classics. Sure, lots of tunes sounded nice to my ears in a nostalgic way, but it's hard to imagine how they'd make much impression on a new audience today. Thinking about it, a lot of UK House and Techno in those days was quite tepid in the sense that it focused on being soulful and smooth with very little aggressive content; very much in awe of it's Chicago and Detroit influences, which is probably why I was still listening to a lot of rhythm-heavy Industrial stuff (Front Line Assembly, Ministry, etc) and also taking a keen interest in the new hardcore sounds emanating from Belgium, which seemed to have a much heavier quantity of 'darkness' - an element I've always been drawn towards. But more on that another time - it's getting late here and I realise that I havn't prepared anything for this week's retro post. I know I keep hinting about recording a Bleepy mix for download, but right now my expectations for it are far greater than my actual capabilities! But I've been gradually ripping some of the old vinyls, so for now here's a couple of the tunes lying around in my harddrive. I don't think either of these are currently available anywhere legally, but if anyone knows different let me know and I'll remove 'em.
Someone mentioned this one in my comments box last week, so thought I'd share it with you lot. It's definitely one of my favourites of the period, really pushing the sound into new experimental areas. It's from "The Black Steel EP", released on Network Records in 1991.
From the "System Overload EP", released on Zoom Records in the same year. One of the guys from Ubik has a little tribute site here. I really like this track, and I played it at Ruffnek. Dunno why really...too tired to even try explaining. I'm off to bed - I need my beauty sleep if I'm gonna manage the Plasticman gig tomorrow night.
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