I’ve had this tune stuck in my head for a week now…. haunting 94 jungle which uses that “let me know” acapella, adding a somber melody which fits the vocal perfectly – an excellent combo which more than compensates for the less than exciting (but still decent) break programming. What makes this so special is that the acapella in of itself sounds a bit “eh” in my opinion… other tunes I’ve heard it in (Da Maytrix “Let Me Know” and Sy and Eruption “12″ of Love”) end up being a bit cheddared up by its inclusion. However, the simple melody in this track, coupled with ominous stabs ala tango/ratty/early formation records, really transform the vocal into something a bit “deeper” sounding. All in all, an excellent jungle track which I think is heavily underrated. If anyone knows who that original vocal is by, please leave a comment below.
Crackles and pops left in because my copy is a bit battered, also this one goes for less than 5 quid so if you like it & want better quality, go buy a copy ya cheapo!
Here’s a wicked release by Mad Dog, known best for their tune “My God”. Both producers behind “Mad Dog” have quite a few good releases to their names – Dave Wallace did tunes as The Rave Doctor, Fugitive(”Mind Games”), Regel Alliance(”Sometimes”), under his own name on Moving Shadow, plus continues to do releases in Aquasky and Black Noise. Shaun O’Hara was also a member of Aurora, who I’ve posted one great track by and who was responsible for several other absolutely killer EPs:”Spectral Bass” which is relatively easy to find and best known for “Voice of Buddha”, and the extremely hard to find First release on Homegrown. This track is a great choppy jungle jam with a well used atmospheric bit I’ve heard in a few other tunes (maybe one by mole the dipper), pitch shifted breaks, quality breaks, etc.
I could have sworn I already posted this…. “Limited Time” is a wicked 94 amen track that distinguishes itself with some scratching integrated with the beats and some choice sampling. Specifically, we get the Paris sample “I understand that time is running out…”, plus that eerie synth/vocal part whose source I can’t remember right now, but which was also used in “Demons Theme” and Holy Ghost’s “Psycho Missus”. Other releases on this label are a bit more in-demand, I think there was a bit of overstock of this one though which was left over from B.I.T.D., as I remember buying an unplayed copy a number of years ago and it seemed like the seller had more than a few of them. X Rated – Limited Time
I dug this out today and had a good listen its a great 12″ from 1993. Its a strange label as its labeled as Experiment 2 but on the flip its Chemisrty Records. A1 features a sample’s from snap – rhythm is a dancer (yeh you know the one) & Arrested Development’s -Man’s Final Frontier, a2 is more my thing, mad apreggios and ragga samples. A great release that I must admit I had over looked in my collection.
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]
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
DJ Fokus is without a doubt one of my favorite of the lesser known 93-95 artists. Originally releasing on the label Blueprint Records, his first release “The Theme” bw “Disengaged” is an in-demand amen smasher, fetching high prices these days. He followed this EP up with a solo outing on the same label, before releasing 2 EPs on his own label Suicide Records. All of these EPs featured heavily cut up beats and deep atmospherics, as well as the engineering talent of the amazing Pete Parsons. Following the Suicide Records releases, he did several more EPs on Dee Jay and Lucky Spin, also engineered by Pete Parsons (who engineered many of those tunes), before disappearing from the dnb world.
Probably my favorite tracks by DJ Fokus is “Brave New World”, off one of his later EPs on Lucky Spin. The other side of this release is probably more well known, having been featured on the popular Promised Land Vol 1 compilation. However, “Brave New World” has some of the sickest drum programming I’ve heard in any tracks from that time.
I already did an entry on Mind Therapy, but only scratched the surface w/ the one EP mentioned there (admittedly a great record). Here’s several more bits of their stuff.
Their first EP was on the Jack In The Box label. This label was more of a distributor (I’ve definitely seen a sticker from them on some old records I own).
This EP precedes any of their E3 EPs by 2 years, and is thus a lot slower. However, the production is quality and it’s a decent tune for sure.
Their next record was E3001, a 6 tracker with less-than-stellar production but some excellent tunes. The breaks are really nicely chopped but, because there’s 3 tracks a side and the production is a bit thin to begin with, some of these don’t hold up so well. However, there’s a 4/4 version of the “ecstacy is safe” tune off E3005, already posted in a previous entry. Mind Therapy – Ecstacey is safe – techno mix
The next EP was a bit of an improvement…. especially of note is the B side, which features a pretty wicked cut up drum-solo in lieu of a regular funk break. Because of this + the really sparse nature of the tune, it could almost be considered “proto-choppage”, alongside the brown + dangerman tracks of the time.
Continuing with the interview, part 1 is below.
Also, anyone looking to contact Bay B Kane can email him at
Different Aliases
I will try to answer the question about all the different aliases which i released tracks under. First of all, lets see how many i can remember…
Bay b Kane
Kid Thunder
Double Tee
Rinca
Code K
Intelligent Junglist
Icon
Parallel
These are the ones that i can remember, but there may have been one or two more still..lol.
The reasons behind having all these different names were quite simple really..
Sometimes it was purely for STEALTH reasons… especially with experimental tracks.
A way of releasing many tracks without over crowding or overexposing an established artist name.
Because of certain styles or sounds, which can be associated with a specific name or artist as the case may be.
Have a Break
“Have A Break” was indeed one of the very first strictly jungle breakbeat sample-friendly cd’s. During a conversation with Andy Bailey, who was the label manager at Whitehouse, I was telling him about the time when I encountered Johnny L’s management people running around like headless chickens frantically phoning people up and saying “Johnny needs breaks”… “he needs original breaks can you help?”… hahaha!! And we were cracking up (as you do) and he said that it would be great to do a full length CD of exactly what we were talking about: Breaks, but not just breaks by themselves… variations of breaks, break bounces, chopped up edits, all that type of stuff which I used to spend hours constructing sometimes. I was slightly against it at first, but then Andy said “I dont want you to include anything that you haven’t used before”. That persuaded me to go ahead and compile this breakbeat cd over a period of 4 weeks…
Of course, some people may remember the slogan for that chocolate wafer bar called KitKat which was “Have a Break..Have a KitKat”… so we did the cover and the name like the KitKat wrapper!! Dunno if we were infringing any copyrights there but who cares..lol. And so it was released and (surprisingly) did fairly well. I’ve since heard many tunes that borrowed breaks from “Have a Break” but I’m not gonna mention any names, coz i don’t want to put anyone on da spot… Plus, it was intended exactly for that purpose, so BIGUP everyone who used samples from “Have a Break”.
Studio Equipment
This is a good question and I’m gonna tell you exactly what kind of setup i had back in 1990 to 1996, studio equipment wise…
my mixing desk was a 24 into 8 into 2 SECK with a totally silent phantom power unit…i really loved that mixer.
AKAI S900 and an S950, giving me 16 seperate sample outputs
Roland JUNO1 as my main keyboard and midi controller
Alesis Qudraverb and a Midiverb II for effects
KORG M1 rack module
ATARI-STFM computer which I ran strictly and only CUBASE on for sequencing and
arrangements
My monitors were TANNOY Berkeley 18inch dual concentrics for the final 5 years.
My studio was named THE FRIDGE because it was in an old industrial refrigerator which had walls that were 4 feet thick, that consisted of sheet metal brick then sand and brick and sheet metal again!! Amazing soundproofing, very atmospheric… I remember marathon sessions in there with Mickey Finn, T Para and Sherry (my Rood Project partner)…and it’s no exaggeration for me to say that hours and days used to go by without being noticed in there, as you had no concept of time of day or night as it had no windows. It was an amazing place to create music.
Long before he started putting out techstep jams, Optical (of Ed Rush & Optical fame) put out some tight tunes under several other aliases – Little Matt, Teknarchi, HEAD F.U.K.,even some suprisingly quality oldschool happy hardcore tunes as Just Another Artist.
Attn labels/artists featured on this blog: I run this because I love your music and want more people to know about it. If you want your track(s) removed, just email me at and I will remove them right away.
and I will remove them right away. 
