A little late with these, but y’know – better late than never. Those rascals at Hardcore Lives! Records are at it again, and I’ve parried their latest nu-rave releases with my Photoshop sword.
First up is a clutch of traditional old-skool sounding rollers from 1st Science, called the Planet Insanity EP:
Then there’s a Hardcore Lives! new style – some dark J-Tek jungle-esque moods from John Browne. So, a new style of cover for this one:
I discovered this embarrassing-but-danceable slice on the Funky London podcast last week and it kept me humming all weekend. A pop-house rehash of Sash!’s ancient Mysterious Times replacing the original’s miserable overtones with a lot more fun. Maybe the 90s were worth something after all..
I may well have posted this before, but since I’m actually going to the Ritz today, here’s a YouTube video of Taco’s excellent synthy cover of Puttin’ On The Ritz from sometime back in the 80s…
After a bit of a break for the festive period and waiting for muggins ‘ere to sort out which cable goes where, there’s a new free release from the Hardcore Lives! stable winging its way imminently toward the interwang.
I haven’t actually heard it yet for bandwidth reasons (mobile broadband soon to be ousted by much manlier ADSL), so you and I both will discover what it’s like when it appears shortly. Here’s a sneak preview of what’s on it:
(This is the 3rd in an occasional series of Music I Hate That Everyone Else Liked – guaranteed to make you want to hit me with your record box. Enjoy!)
If there’s one word that can describe a lot of UK house music from the mid-90s, it’s flaccid. Whilst European ravers pummelled their ears with the massively tuned kick-drums of gabber, British clubbers bopped apologetically to beats that wouldn’t burst a paper bag. Leading this Charge of the Wet Brigade were The Bucketheads and their tedious anthem The Bomb!
Kenny Dope presents The Bucketheads – The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)
Another grand example of house glued together with irritating sound-effects, The Bomb!’s repertoire comprises some kind of alarm noise and a clipped sample of some yelping ladies, presumably excited by the tune’s unique percussive stylings of a haddock being slapped against a clothes-horse. It’s the 9-minute version from the Positiva Classics series that’s forever etched on my brain; it’s not so much the eternal build-up that’s galling – though it’s bad enough – but the let-down when you get there. 4-or-so minutes of wiggling to a frenzied yet random arrangement of the aforementioned three samples should be paid off with a little more than a man with a bugle, and then some more of those three samples. Not even a vocal lifted from Chicago can lift it for me, guys. Sorry. Even after recent listening, why people ever liked this remains beyond me.
It’s not all bad news. Michael Moog took the basic melodic idea, chucked out all the FX, added some more sensitive percussion and released a more satisfying albeit cocktail-loungey version in That Sound. It has a chunkier if typical Full Intention remix-by-numbers on the flip and is generally worth seeking out if you’re desperate for some of this riff in your life.
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