Chapter Seven

Slipping into Darkness

43 records, in the order the book names them

• 001

  Mass Confusion

  2 Bad Mice

  There was imagery of brain damage (Bizzy B’s ‘Total Amnesia’, 4 Hero’s ‘Mind Loss (A State of Amnesia)’) and disorientation (2 Bad Mice’s ‘Mass Confusion’, Satin Storm’s ‘Think I’m Going Out Of My Head’).

  Moving Shadow
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 002

  Bludclot Artattack

  Edrush

  There were tracks about death, like Ed Rush’s ‘Bludclot Artattack’, with its ‘you’ve got a ticket to hell’ sample, and Origin Unknown’s ‘Valley Of the Shadows’, which pivoted around an unnerving soundbite from a BBC documentary about near-death experiences: ‘felt that I was in a long dark tunnel’.

  No U Turn
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 003

  Valley Of the Shadows

  Origin Unknown

  There were tracks about death, like Ed Rush’s ‘Bludclot Artattack’, with its ‘you’ve got a ticket to hell’ sample, and Origin Unknown’s ‘Valley Of the Shadows’, which pivoted around an unnerving soundbite from a BBC documentary about near-death experiences: ‘felt that I was in a long dark tunnel’.

  Ram
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 004

  Hello Darkness

  Bay-B-Kane

  And then there were self-reflexive dark tracks that enshrouded the dancefloor in twilight-zone malaise, like Metalheads’ ‘Sinister’ and Bay-B-Kane’s ‘Hello Darkness’ (the title phrase came from a cheeky but thoroughly creepy sample from Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’).

  Ruff Guidance
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 005

  Sinister

  Metalheads

  And then there were self-reflexive dark tracks that enshrouded the dancefloor in twilight-zone malaise, like Metalheads’ ‘Sinister’ and Bay-B-Kane’s ‘Hello Darkness’ (the title phrase came from a cheeky but thoroughly creepy sample from Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’).

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 006

  Warpdrive

  DJ Crystl

  Another major darkside trope was the idea of drug intensities as a sinister power source, a malign forcefield in which the raver is suspended and entrapped: DJ Crystl’s ‘Warpdrive’, 4 Hero’s ‘The Power’, and DJ Hype’s ‘Weird Energy’.

  Dee Jay
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 007

  Weird Energy

  DJ Hype

  Another major darkside trope was the idea of drug intensities as a sinister power source, a malign forcefield in which the raver is suspended and entrapped: DJ Crystl’s ‘Warpdrive’, 4 Hero’s ‘The Power’, and DJ Hype’s ‘Weird Energy’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 008

  Ricky

  Remarc & Lewi Cifer

  Perhaps most perturbing of all was an entire mini-genre of panic-attack songs – Remarc’s ‘Ricky’, Johnny Jungle’s ‘Johnny’, Subnation’s ‘Scottie’ – all of which were based around a sample of someone shouting out a name, as a cry for help or in sheer horror.

  Dollar
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 009

  Johnny

  Johnny Jungle

  Perhaps most perturbing of all was an entire mini-genre of panic-attack songs – Remarc’s ‘Ricky’, Johnny Jungle’s ‘Johnny’, Subnation’s ‘Scottie’ – all of which were based around a sample of someone shouting out a name, as a cry for help or in sheer horror.

  Suburban Base
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 010

  Scottie

  Subnation/Ray Keith

  Perhaps most perturbing of all was an entire mini-genre of panic-attack songs – Remarc’s ‘Ricky’, Johnny Jungle’s ‘Johnny’, Subnation’s ‘Scottie’ – all of which were based around a sample of someone shouting out a name, as a cry for help or in sheer horror.

  Future Vinyl
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 011

  Lords of the Null Lines

  Hyper-On Experience

  That moment of disenchantment is captured in Hyper-On Experience’s 1993 anthem ‘Lords of the Null Lines’, a Gothic symphony of hiccuping, skittery rhythms and something-wicked-this-way-comes strings.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 012

  Space Cakes

  Kaotic Chemistry

  Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘LSD’ EP continues the polydrug excess theme with ‘Space Cakes’, ‘LSD’, ‘Drum Trip II’ and ‘Illegal Subs’ (a later remix EP adds ‘Vitamin K’, named after a slang term for ketamine).

  Krome & Time Remix
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 013

  Drum Trip II

  Kaotic Chemistry

  Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘LSD’ EP continues the polydrug excess theme with ‘Space Cakes’, ‘LSD’, ‘Drum Trip II’ and ‘Illegal Subs’ (a later remix EP adds ‘Vitamin K’, named after a slang term for ketamine).

  Krome & Time Remix
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 014

  Illegal Subs

  Kaotic Chemistry

  Kaotic Chemistry’s ‘LSD’ EP continues the polydrug excess theme with ‘Space Cakes’, ‘LSD’, ‘Drum Trip II’ and ‘Illegal Subs’ (a later remix EP adds ‘Vitamin K’, named after a slang term for ketamine).

  Krome & Time Remix
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 015

  Surgery

  Doc Scott

  This idea of ‘healing toxins’ is another theme running through hardcore, from Doc Scott’s ‘Surgery’ and ‘NHS’ EPs, through Praga Khan’s ‘Injected With A Poison’, to the Prodigy’s ‘Poison’, with its chant ‘I’ve got the poison / I’ve got the remedy’.

  all Absolute 2
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 016

  Poison

  Babylon Timewarp

  This idea of ‘healing toxins’ is another theme running through hardcore, from Doc Scott’s ‘Surgery’ and ‘NHS’ EPs, through Praga Khan’s ‘Injected With A Poison’, to the Prodigy’s ‘Poison’, with its chant ‘I’ve got the poison / I’ve got the remedy’.

  Intense
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 017

  Love Overdose

  D-M-S

  Lurking within the effervescent ‘hyper-ness’ of Production House tracks like DMS’s ‘Love Overdose’ and ‘Mindwreck’ is a kind of death-wish.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 018

  Mindwreck

  D-M-S

  Lurking within the effervescent ‘hyper-ness’ of Production House tracks like DMS’s ‘Love Overdose’ and ‘Mindwreck’ is a kind of death-wish.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 019

  Let Me Be Your Fantasy

  Baby D

  Even Baby D’s ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ – Production House’s biggest smash, eventually making Number One in the Pop Charts when rereleased in 1994 – is veined with ambivalence.

  album Open ↗ YouTube
• 020

  Finest Illusion

  Foul Play

  Foul Play’s ‘Finest Illusion’, a near-symphonic rush of pizzicato riffs and swoony cascades, is a classic example: if ‘you’re the finest I’ve ever known’ doesn’t refer to a particularly pure batch of MDMA, why else did the band title the track ‘Finest Illusion’?

  Section 5
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 021

  Mr Kirk’s Nightmare

  4 Hero

  Mid-track, there’s a sample of a single word, the horror-struck cry ‘how??!?’ This is taken from the spoken-word intro of 4 Hero’s 1990 classic ‘Mr Kirk’s Nightmare’ – itself sampled from Think’s 1971 hit ‘Once You Understand’, a cautionary tale about the generation gap – in which a policeman comes to a father’s house to tell him that his seventeen-year-old son Robert is dead.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 022

  Where’s The Boy

  4 Hero

  Two years after ‘Mr Kirk’s Nightmare’, the band returned to the subject of Ecstasy fatalities with 1992’s sick-joke concept EP, ‘Where’s The Boy’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 023

  Here Comes The Drumz

  Nasty Habits

  On Nasty Habits’ ‘Here Comes The Drumz’, the riff morphs like the ‘liquid metal’ plasma-flesh of the robo-assassin in Terminator 2.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 024

  Darkrider

  Rufige Kru

  Take Rufige Cru tracks like ‘Darkrider’ and ‘Jim Skreech’: the staccato string-stabs, scuttling breaks and shivery textures always make me think of ‘crank bugs’, the speedfreak delusion that insects are crawling under your skin.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 025

  Jim Skreech

  Rufige Kru

  Take Rufige Cru tracks like ‘Darkrider’ and ‘Jim Skreech’: the staccato string-stabs, scuttling breaks and shivery textures always make me think of ‘crank bugs’, the speedfreak delusion that insects are crawling under your skin.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 026

  Terminator

  Metalheads

  After the ‘Darkrider’ EP, Rufige Cru’s Goldie adopted the Metalheads moniker and released ‘Terminator’, a track whose anti-naturalistic rhythms constituted a landmark in the evolution of breakbeat hardcore into a rhythmic psychedelia.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 027

  Peacemaker

  Nebula II

  In a similarly dystopian cyberpunk vein, Nebula II breakbeat-techno classics ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘X-Plore H-Core’ sound as a coldhearted, inorganic and implacable as a Robocop-style cyborg suppressing some twenty-first century inner-city insurrection; synths sting like tear-gas, riffs jab and jolt like electric cattle-prods, android vocals admonish and castigate.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 028

  X-Plore H-Core

  Nebula II

  In a similarly dystopian cyberpunk vein, Nebula II breakbeat-techno classics ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘X-Plore H-Core’ sound as a coldhearted, inorganic and implacable as a Robocop-style cyborg suppressing some twenty-first century inner-city insurrection; synths sting like tear-gas, riffs jab and jolt like electric cattle-prods, android vocals admonish and castigate.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 029

  Confusion!!

  Sly T & Ollie J

  Nasty Habits’ ‘Here Comes The Drumz’ is the sound of inner-city turmoil; the track samples a snatch of Public Enemy rabble-rousing, with Chuck D declaiming the title phrase stagefront and Flavor Flav barging in to blurt ‘Confusion!!’ Produced by Doc Scott and released by Reinforced in late 1992, ‘Drumz’ is widely regarded as the dark track, the death-knell for happy-rave.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 030

  Journey From the Light

  4 Hero

  That, says Dego McFarlane, was the meaning behind 4 Hero’s ‘Journey From the Light’ EP; time to move out of the commercial limelight, away from ‘all the happy stuff’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 031

  Golden Age

  4 Hero

  Later in 1993, 4 Hero’s ‘Golden Age’ EP and its attendant ‘Golden Age Remixes’ cloaked darker-than-thou themes with a new soft-core sensuality, at once mellow and morbid.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 032

  Dark Angel

  Nasty Habits

  So in darkside, there was a strong vein of superstition, surfacing in titles like Doc Scott’s ‘Dark Angel’, Nebula II’s ‘Seance’, Rufige Cru’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ and Megadrive’s ‘Demon’ (with its ‘fury of a demon possessed me’ sample).

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 033

  Seance

  Nebula II

  So in darkside, there was a strong vein of superstition, surfacing in titles like Doc Scott’s ‘Dark Angel’, Nebula II’s ‘Seance’, Rufige Cru’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ and Megadrive’s ‘Demon’ (with its ‘fury of a demon possessed me’ sample).

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 034

  Ghosts of My Life

  Rufige Kru

  So in darkside, there was a strong vein of superstition, surfacing in titles like Doc Scott’s ‘Dark Angel’, Nebula II’s ‘Seance’, Rufige Cru’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ and Megadrive’s ‘Demon’ (with its ‘fury of a demon possessed me’ sample).

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 035

  Demon

  Megadrive

  So in darkside, there was a strong vein of superstition, surfacing in titles like Doc Scott’s ‘Dark Angel’, Nebula II’s ‘Seance’, Rufige Cru’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ and Megadrive’s ‘Demon’ (with its ‘fury of a demon possessed me’ sample).

  Formation
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 036

  The Dark Stranger

  Boogie Times Tribe

  Boogie Times Tribe’s ‘The Dark Stranger’ is a classic example of the Hollywood horror-movie influence on darkside.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 037

  Voodoo Ray

  A Guy Called Gerald

  Darkside’s voodoo-imagery – 4 Hero’s ‘Make Yah See Spiders On The Wall (Voodoo Beats)’, Hyper-On Experience’s ‘Lords Of The Null Lines’ with its ‘fucking voodoo magic’ sample from Predator 2 – was just the latest efflorescence of a metaphor with a long history in house music, from A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’ to D.H.S.’s ‘Holo-Voodoo’.

  Rham
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 038

  Holo-Voodoo

  D.H.S

  Darkside’s voodoo-imagery – 4 Hero’s ‘Make Yah See Spiders On The Wall (Voodoo Beats)’, Hyper-On Experience’s ‘Lords Of The Null Lines’ with its ‘fucking voodoo magic’ sample from Predator 2 – was just the latest efflorescence of a metaphor with a long history in house music, from A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’ to D.H.S.’s ‘Holo-Voodoo’.

  Hangman
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 039

  Your Only Friend

  Phuture

  This trope of being bewitched, turned into a zombi, pervaded acid house and jack tracks – from Phuture’s ‘Your Only Friend’ (which personified Cocaine as a robot-voiced slave-master) to Sleezy D’s ‘I’ve Lost Control’, on which a dehumanized vocal ascends through panic (‘I’m losing it’) to fatalism (‘I’ve lost it’).

  Trax
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 040

  I’ve Lost Control

  Sleezy D

  This trope of being bewitched, turned into a zombi, pervaded acid house and jack tracks – from Phuture’s ‘Your Only Friend’ (which personified Cocaine as a robot-voiced slave-master) to Sleezy D’s ‘I’ve Lost Control’, on which a dehumanized vocal ascends through panic (‘I’m losing it’) to fatalism (‘I’ve lost it’).

  Trax
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 041

  I Want To Leave My Body

  Green Velvet

  Green Velvet released a series of brilliant ‘dark’ house tracks with Sleezy D-style spoken-voice monologues, ‘I Want To Leave My Body’, ‘Conniption’, ‘Help Me’, ‘The Stalker (I’m Losing My Mind)’ and ‘Flash’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 042

  Help Me

  Green Velvet

  Green Velvet released a series of brilliant ‘dark’ house tracks with Sleezy D-style spoken-voice monologues, ‘I Want To Leave My Body’, ‘Conniption’, ‘Help Me’, ‘The Stalker (I’m Losing My Mind)’ and ‘Flash’.

  Relief/Yeti
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 043

  Flash

  Green Velvet

  Green Velvet released a series of brilliant ‘dark’ house tracks with Sleezy D-style spoken-voice monologues, ‘I Want To Leave My Body’, ‘Conniption’, ‘Help Me’, ‘The Stalker (I’m Losing My Mind)’ and ‘Flash’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube