Europe Trip finds, vol 1 – London Bargain bins

Since I just got back from a 3 week vacation across Europe, I’ll probably be posting a lot about my various record finds from there over the next few weeks. First up is the UK..

Anybody into jungle who has been to UK record shops over the past few years knows that hardcore has gotten more and more expensive… gone are the days when you could easily score rare hardcore for super cheap. Instead, sellers are either wise to Discogs / Ebay and try to charge full “internet rate” for records, or the lazy sellers just blindly charge 8-10 pounds+ for hardcore singles, no matter how common or cheap. You still find some occasional deals around, but you’re far more likely to find loads of T99 and other giant press rave singles for 8 pounds+ a piece.

That being said, it’s still fun to root around in some bargain basements there and see what kind of treasures you can unearth. Since I had a few days off in London, I decided to give it a shot… unfortuantely, I only found a couple of really great bits. The one that REALLY got me stoked was Sacred “Do It Together” remix EP for 50p. This is an absolute corker of a tune which fetches serious money online, and which has been on my want list for a while…. so finding it in some nasty basement for 50p was great.

At least it WAS great, until I got it home and actually bothered to pull the record out of its sleeve. That’s when I noticed this:

One side of the record is completely scratched to fuck… it plays without skipping, but just barely, and with nasty clicks through the song. What’s worse, the scratched side is the better of the two tunes. Still nice to have, but the record condition definitely put a dampener on that find.

After some serious cleaning back in Boston, it isn’t THAT bad… the click is still really noticeable though. I ran it through some plugins and tried to clean it up a bit, but it’s still a bit rough. Nonetheless, it’s a wicked tune and is well worth sharing.

Sacred – Do It Together (Remix) [cleaned up version]

Also for anyone curious what the original record sounds like (before digital click+ scratch removal), here it is:
Sacred – Do It Together (Remix) [original crappy scratched record version]

Another wicked record which threw me for a spin based on its condition was Foul Play Vol 1. This is a well known + heavily sought after EP which is basically a hardcore essential. I found this one for pretty cheap as well, but it was covered in all sorts of crap and looked like it might not be salvageable. I thought it was hopeless, but the seller gave it a good cleaning, and it came out sounding fine!

Here’s one of my favorite tracks off this EP, though the whole EP is great. The break cutting in this tune is insane, really original and unlike other hardcore stuff at the time or since.

Foul Play – Ricochet
link removed pending posting on hardcore junglism