A video history of rave

November 24, 2006 6:34 AM

Classic UK Hardcore Breakbeat videos. John Tab, a Washington DC-area Drum and Bass DJ, has been scouring you tube for classic UK hardcore and jungle videos from the early 90s and offering them up with commentary.
posted by empath (52 comments total)

*sheds a tear for beautiful late-night warehouse parties*

Ok, I can go to work now. Thanks, empath.
posted by mediareport at 6:58 AM on November 24, 2006

This is the best thing ever.
posted by chunking express at 7:06 AM on November 24, 2006

Good fun, mostly the more iritating happy hardcore tunes, but then that was the aim of the game!

An entire genre of music was more or less based around this "hoover" sound. It's called jungle/drum'n'bass..

Er, no. There were alot of tunes though. I think the Juno 106 keyboard had it as preset number one, which coupled with preset number one on the korg M1 was responsible for a good percentage of low-effort rave tunes.

Cut the midrange, drop the bass by cylob is a fun homage.
posted by asok at 7:08 AM on November 24, 2006

Personally, I'd rather listen to the sound of my own skull being crushed in a vice than even a millisecond of jungle music.
posted by pcameron at 7:15 AM on November 24, 2006

Woot! Mash it up by playing them simultanously!
posted by Bravocharlie at 7:23 AM on November 24, 2006

pcameron:
I'm not much of a D&B fan myself, but some of the jazzier 'jungle' can be quite easy on the ears, you know: for example: LTJ Bukem - Horizons

It's a bit of an acquired taste, though.
posted by empath at 7:23 AM on November 24, 2006

Papua New Guinea! I used to want that played at my funeral.
posted by Mocata at 7:29 AM on November 24, 2006

I want "Evapor8" to be played when they cremate me.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 7:36 AM on November 24, 2006

"Watch your bass bins I'm telling ya"

I was listening to this only yesterday. Now, where did I put that tub of Vicks?
posted by jontyjago at 7:41 AM on November 24, 2006

An entire genre of music was more or less based around this "hoover" sound. It's called jungle/drum'n'bass..

Most of his commentary seems a little confused, really. Great videos, though.
posted by jack_mo at 7:45 AM on November 24, 2006

Top one, nice one, get Sorted!

This is the sound of ALTERN-8 (8, 8, 8, 8, 8)

This stuff came out when I started college and compared to all the other cool music people in Austin were listening to at the time (Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Nirvana etc.) I was a real freak for trying to import this artificial "crap" from overseas. I spent every extra dime I had on these $30 cds from Technophilia and could NOT get enough. Aaah, good times.
posted by ernie at 7:45 AM on November 24, 2006

Ahh ... "Let Me Be Your Fantasy". Piano breaks would never be so excellent or so cheesey ever again.

Pcameron and others who suspect that this might be all jungle, all the time -- a lot of the videos in that thread actually predate the junglist movement. Early hardcore has a much slower tempo and lacks the frenetic ADD-ridden, auction-calling vocals that tends to be a staple of UK junglism.

If anything, early hardcore is a trunk in the evolutionary tree that branched in one direction into drum & bass and into another form that we would ultimately know of as Big Beat electronica -- ie. Crystal Method, Fatboy Slim and other car commercial fodder.
posted by bl1nk at 7:48 AM on November 24, 2006

jack--- He was actually joking about that bit, i'm fairly sure. He's practically an encyclopedia of EDM. That messageboard has just a few hundred readers these days. He's just posting those for his friends, not a general audience.
posted by empath at 7:50 AM on November 24, 2006

I guess a lot of this stuff hasn't aged too well, but aside from the FSOL track you still drop Bombscare in a mix and the crowd will eat it up. I've seen it done!
posted by ernie at 7:59 AM on November 24, 2006

While we are near the subject, this is the man aledgedly responsible for inspiring The Crystal Method to drop the straight trance they were doing and slap a break-beat behind it. West-coast trance went overground and my Hardkiss and Rabbit in the Moon records became gold-dust.
posted by asok at 8:18 AM on November 24, 2006

...West-coast breaks...
posted by asok at 8:20 AM on November 24, 2006

Personally, I'd rather listen to the sound of my own skull being crushed in a vice than even a millisecond of jungle music.

Then you are missing out. But don't let that stop you watching any of the videos on the linked thread as none of them are junglist tunes.
posted by asok at 8:24 AM on November 24, 2006

CHOON!

Damn. Now I need to go dig out my Pork Pie hat and white gloves.

Thanks empath. You rock bass.
posted by Mr Bismarck at 8:25 AM on November 24, 2006

Damn. Now I need to go dig out my Pork Pie hat and white gloves.

don't forget the talcum powder for some of those dodgy floors.
posted by bl1nk at 8:38 AM on November 24, 2006

I can see that one floating.

"No officer, it's talc for the floor, honest."
posted by Mr Bismarck at 8:55 AM on November 24, 2006

For anyone wanting to nitpick about different genres...
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music
posted by imaswinger at 8:56 AM on November 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine who was big into the "kangol cap + white gloves" look always used to bring a lot of baby powder for traction -- which is why your comment got my particular reply. Been to more than a few party venues with some pretty slippery/sketchy floors (roller skating rinks, junked auto garages, etc.) where a little scattering of powder is the difference between carefree dancing and an injured ankle or knee.

Granted, most of these parties weren't the sort that had a duty officer on premises, checking for weapons or drugs, but even later, as the events grew larger scale and door searches became a common thing, I'd walk past my fair share of inspections with either talcum powder in the backpack or tins of breath mints in my pockets and get minimal hassle. It always amazed me when cops or door guys would open up the pack of white, almost featureless discs and inevitably wave me through. Behaving like an innocent party and offering to share Altoids goes a long way, I suppose.
posted by bl1nk at 9:16 AM on November 24, 2006

The guards aren't there to look for drugs, they're there to give the appearance of looking for drugs. Even if they find them, they just hand them off to friends inside to sell.
posted by empath at 9:18 AM on November 24, 2006

Time to get grimey!
posted by meehawl at 9:22 AM on November 24, 2006

The latest Squarepusher albulm is awesome if you like this kind of thing.
posted by Artw at 9:34 AM on November 24, 2006

I was in London '90 to '93 working as a recording engineer for this hardcore label "rising high". It was an intense time. Once we did 3 tracks in the one night and somehow they all got into the dance chart.

Each week the bpm would creep up. The early tracks were around 125bpm, by the time i left the label it was over 150bpm and starting to sound like jungle- though we called it "london breakbeat".
posted by bhnyc at 9:37 AM on November 24, 2006

LSD is the Bomb
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:50 AM on November 24, 2006

I remember Rising High - didn't they release a record with a voice repeating the phrase "I like da weed, da marijuana"? That was a superb track.
posted by jontyjago at 9:52 AM on November 24, 2006

Fantastic, those brought back memories... It also prompted me to put Altern8 & Messiah onto my workout playlist. If I die of a heart attack next week I'm coming back to haunt you, empath.

Coincidentally, I was browsing youtube yesterday and found some great old footage from the early Dreamscape parties: Hype, Ratty, Slipmap, GQ... you can almost smell the gurning.

Wasn't talcum powder was more part of the Northern Soul scene?
posted by blag at 9:52 AM on November 24, 2006

Asok, the Juno 106 is a little too smooth to make a proper hoover sound. I think you may be confusing it with the Alpha Juno line of synths.
posted by Human Flesh at 10:29 AM on November 24, 2006

Damn. Now I need to go dig out my Pork Pie hat and white gloves.

don't forget the talcum powder for some of those dodgy floors.

Are you trying to build some sort of weird British subculture hybrid superhero? TwoToneRaveNorthernSoul Boy to the rescue!


jack--- He was actually joking about that bit, i'm fairly sure.

Yeah, looking again you're right - I think my brain strips out those forum smiley graphics automatically! Still, lots of the comments seem a bit off to someone who caught the tail end of rave in the UK.
posted by jack_mo at 10:35 AM on November 24, 2006

Bloody hell this takes me back. Not in a "I danced till 4am to Baby D" type way - I was only 12 at the time most of these were released - but my class at school was obsessed with rave in a very naive way. Living around the M25, at the weekends we all used to stay up looking for "rave lights" (probably actually floodlights from the industrial estate, but anyway). We all used to swap tapes; I still have a copy of "Maximum Rave", some dodgy compilation tape, kicking about somewhere. When Sweet Harmony or Ebeneezer Goode were played at the school disco, we all used to go mental. As you can imagine we didn't have the faintest clue about rave culture but were just riding the coat-tails of what we heard on the radio and read in magazines. All very embarrassing... and I'd forgotten all about it until this post dredged it up in a petite madeleine style way.

And now things have come full circle, we have the Klaxons and at gigs I am confronted by 17 year olds with glow sticks who are far cooler than I will ever be. Ah well.
posted by greycap at 10:54 AM on November 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

God, the tunes, I can dig (for the most part... some of the production is definitely dated...) But wow.

The fashion??? And the dancing style? Did they really dance like that, or is that just for the videos? I guess it's just better without the videos. Or at least less humans, and more flashing lights.

It's great to see this shit, because I've really been getting into breakcore/raggacore lately (V Snares, Shitmat, Toecutter, Xian, Sickboy, Aaron Spectre, etc...) And there's a definite lineage here. Down to some of these samples being used. I really like the harder Hoover bass that Panacea uses (well a lot of these hardcore dnb guys use). Is that still considered hoover?
posted by symbioid at 10:57 AM on November 24, 2006

Did they really dance like that

My favorite is the mashed up guy dancing in the kitchen in the Altern 8 video. Plus I love the home-made touches - like the Boglin in the same one, or the toy alien that appears in Trip II the Moon.
posted by greycap at 11:02 AM on November 24, 2006

It's great to see this shit, because I've really been getting into breakcore/raggacore lately (V Snares, Shitmat, Toecutter, Xian, Sickboy, Aaron Spectre, etc...) And there's a definite lineage here. Down to some of these samples being used.

That music is interesting - I put Kid 606 at a club night I ran years ago (with Len) and when I found out a) that he was American and b) how young he was, it blew my mind - all these Americans and Canadians with an ersatz nostalgia for it, but nonetheless completely getting it. Very odd. (No more odd than British teenagers playing the blues in the 60s, though, I suppose.) I wonder if this is the reason Shitmat takes care to assert his Britishness - sampling the Archers theme tune, using the Burberry check on cover art, &c. (Also interesting is the fact that all of these people are taking their cues from the avant garde as much as rave to make such gloriously daft music.)

Re: the samples used, most of the acts you mention have sampled rave records themselves, rather than sampling from the same sources.
posted by jack_mo at 11:50 AM on November 24, 2006

It's not necessarily ersatz nostalgia. Acid House started in the US, and jungle and hardcore was filtering back from the UK as early as 1992 and 1993. It was never a mass movement here, but there was a scene started here (lead by folks like DB and Scott Henry) that lasted up till 2000 or 2001 before it started to die off a bit. I just went to an 'old school' party this past Friday at one of the bigger clubs in DC where they played a big chunk of these tracks, and it was packed.
posted by empath at 11:55 AM on November 24, 2006

I now regret not choosing Stakker Humanoid as my user name.
posted by forallmankind at 12:09 PM on November 24, 2006

gloriously daft
posted by meehawl at 2:42 PM on November 24, 2006

a few years later but most people on here should enjoy this Ken Ishii classic - Extra
posted by Frasermoo at 3:02 PM on November 24, 2006

Can't we all just live in Sweet Harmony?

(Speaking of records that sample other rave records.)
posted by beaucoupkevin at 3:20 PM on November 24, 2006

The fashion??? And the dancing style? Did they really dance like that, or is that just for the videos?

heh. I spent fucking hours trying to learn to dance like keith and leeroy. great example.
posted by blag at 3:49 PM on November 24, 2006

[this is the best]
posted by rxrfrx at 4:02 PM on November 24, 2006

Keeping it real, oh yes.
posted by meehawl at 4:36 PM on November 24, 2006

"Excuse me, Mr. DJ -- do you have a mix of 'Move Any Mountain' by The Shamen?"

"Why yes. Yes I do."
posted by rifflesby at 5:11 PM on November 24, 2006

Was Move Any Mountain the first record to be released with the tracks separate so that you could remix it your self? The triple pack included 16 remixes and the samples to make your own. The only other track I knew that was officially remixed as much was Transform Transformations. The riff from Cubik by 808 State appeared on just about every 12" released within 3 months of it's time, 808 State joked that they were waiting until they had 50 to take to the lawyer as a job lot.

Human Flesh, you could be right. It may have been a tweeked Juno 106 or indeed the alpha. All I remember was 1. DOMINATOR was what appeared on the screen when it was turned on.

Rave was a good indication that people like to party, despite living in the UK and being deprived of all of the celebrations that the (catholic) rest of Europe enjoy.
posted by asok at 6:16 PM on November 24, 2006

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
ntzntzntzntz
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
ntzntzntzntz..

Ahhhhhh. Happy days.
posted by lalochezia at 6:23 PM on November 24, 2006

[this is good]
posted by loquacious at 11:08 PM on November 24, 2006

I'm with you Blag. I spent a lot of time on the tiled floor in the kitchen trying to replicate Leeroy, but I only ever got to a sort of Liam running-on-the-spot level.

I tried copying Liam's moves from No Good, but could never get the sledgehammer into the club.
posted by Mr Bismarck at 1:23 AM on November 25, 2006

Awesome.
posted by sveskemus at 3:51 AM on November 25, 2006

I'm finally going through all this... jebus, that (awfully lo-fi) bit in the airplane hangar while the sun was rising outside brought back some memories.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:10 AM on November 25, 2006

Oh god, Orb.

*grinds teeth in happy memory*
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:11 AM on November 25, 2006

Classic N-Joi track.

May have missed it in the linked thread, as it's ten pages, but I didn't see it there.
posted by Mr Bismarck at 1:52 PM on November 25, 2006