![]() ![]() Musical Mob’s own term is “raw for the floor” (the title of another of their tunes, which I yet to hear, at least knowingly). Apparently people on the scene use the term “eight bar” to describe this style of nouveau 4-to-the-floor garage, ‘cos after eight bars it switches. It barely has structure, just alternates between three simple, pared-to-the-bone patterns rhythmic propulsion stripped of all affect, bar an aura of bleak purposiveness. “Pulse X” (just one of a series of mixes: “Y”, “Z” etc) raises the same question as “Grindin’”: is this even music? Strictly speaking, it’s unlistenable on its own, outside the mix, and all the way from beginning to end. Literally: it’s only raison d’etre is as a launching pad for freestyles. Apparently this tune wiped the floor with Fischerspooner on Top of the Pops, which is just icing on the cake.ģ/ MUSICAL MOB-“Pulse X (VIP Mix)” (Inspired Sounds Records)īacking track of the year. Likewise the beats are the least interesting thing about “LK”, supplying propulsiveness but nothing else what makes it sublime is the plangent and sparkling cat’s cradle that is the pizzicato acoustic guitar figure, the gulf-stream currents of warm bass, and the nape-tingling vocal melody (hard to tell if it’s a straight lift from “Carolina Carol Bela”, or whether vocal science has been been brought to bear in repatterning it). Must admit there was a great vibe emanating from the drum’n’bass pirates this summer the scene seems always to be on the verge of a comeback, but the music never quite makes it for me-good to see vocals and pop sensibility making a reappearance, but the beats are just too linear, still stuck in the one-bar loop rut that Tim Finney Skykicking’s identified as drum’n’bass’s post-techstep downfall. And it would hit our rented living room like a bolt of joy, either with the inanely-upful-yet-irresistible MC vocal or as the instrumental version. Wearing a sweater in August: what a buzz! Besides, who needed sunshine with “LK” supplying the summer vibes? Marky Mark & XRS’s drum’n’bossa reworking of a Jorge Benjor & Toquinho tune from 1969 is the first D&B record I’ve paid money for since 1997. ![]() Chilling but thrilling.Ģ/ DJ MARKY & XRS featuring STAMINA MC – “LK (Carolina Carol Bela)” (V Recordings)Īfter seven years of sweltering humidity Manhattan-style, I actually found summer in London-near-constant rain, the lowest amount of sunshine in a couple of decades-literally refreshing. Meanwhile, the fembot’s lobotomised voice incanting “I-love-U” in speak-and-spell tones seems to be there to parody or puncture the vacuousness of Barbie-style love und romance. It’s more like a panoramic, fractured overview of modern romance, unified by a consistent harshness of tone that mingles contempt, coldness, callousness, me-I-disconnect-from-you. It’s mostly Dizzy, with a girl cutting in now and then, and even after a score of listens I still don’t quite have a grip on the lyrics, whether there’s a narrative as such. Increasingly the dubstrumental flipsides of top tunes seem to be preferred, as backing tracks for MC’s freestyling. Must have heard this about ten times on the pirates before anybody played the actual A-Side, the vocal cut. I want to believe this is the real-deal paradigm shift so much that I can’t trust what my ears are telling me: that it is. ![]() Then the rap enters-a high-pitched male voice, weirdly poised between distraught and derisive: Roll Deep’s Dizzy Rascal making his solo debut-and you know you’re witnessing the birth of the New Thing #8 in a series of convulsive renewals with the hardcore/pirate radio continuum. When the bass-blasts tear through like Rotterdam Terror Corps and the electro claps scythe ‘n’ shear like stressed metal, “I Love You” hits with the force of an aesthetic ambush: this ain’t UK garage as we’ve known it. 1/ DIZZY RASCAL – “I Love You” (white label)Īnd this year the criteria are… surprise, surprise, surprise. ![]()
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