Replicant Roy: He wants more life, fucker...
My recent Thursday nights have been spent 'locked on' to Rinse FM. After the kids have gone to bed and the wife's busy ironing or settled in front of the telly, I'm just in time to catch most of Youngsta's set from 9.00-11.00pm, featuring the heaviest half-step dubscapes on the planet. Then from 11.00-1.00pm the vibe changes completely with Distance and Quiet Storm spinning the choicest, darkest breakbeat belters you could wish for, although last night's show was a actually a Quiet Storm solo set. It's just a shame that the Rinse stream is so temperamental - a lot of the time it's plagued by nasty static interference and sometimes it doesn't work at all!
As I've mentioned before, Quiet Storm heads the Storming Productions label, which has so far released three fine platters from Search & Destroy, Dub Child and Toasty. Here's a short excerpt from last night's show (when the reception was reasonably good), featuring a wicked new tune from Dub Child ("fresh off the Cubase") called "Mt. Zion". I fade out when the static starts getting heavy again, but not before Storm read my text message and gives a shout-out to Gutterbreakz - wahey!!
MP3:
Last night's set was also loaded with tracks from the new Vex'd album, including "Angels" - the one that samples Rutger Hauer as Nexus-6 replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner":
Fiery the Angels fell,
Deep thunder rolled around their shores,
Burning with the fires of Orc.
This is a paraphrased quote from a William Blake poem (the original line was "the angels rose"), presumably relating to the replicants' 'fall to Earth'. All this current dark breaks stuff has drawn me back, once again, to mid-90's d'n'b - expect a few tunes from that era to start popping-up at the Gutterbox in the next few weeks. Earlier yesterday I was listening to a some old tracks from Goldie's Metalheadz label, including a Dillinja tune called "The Angels Fell" which, as the title suggests, features the same dialogue sample. Even the pad sounds seems to emulate Vangelis' original Blade Runner soundtrack. For a 10-year-old piece of music it still sounds pretty heavy - check it:
MP3:
What is it about Blade Runner that keeps attracting producers? Don't forget that Distance's "Replicant" also features dialogue from the film. I reckon the ultimate Blade Runner homage must be "Tyrell" by Hoodlum Priest, from their album "Heart Of Darkness", released by ZTT in 1990. Don't remember much about them, other than they were a duo comprising of Thompson (music, programming) and Sevier (vocals) and that they didn't like each other very much. "Tyrell" is the highlight of a good album - fully loaded with Blade Runner samples, apocalyptic orchestral stabs and crunchy industrial beats. The only thing that really dates it is Sevier's 'rapping' - this was back in the days when Brits insisted on trying to emulate American MCs. Unfortunately I only have a crappy C90 copy, from which this MP3 was created, so apologies for the tape-hiss, but it's well worth a listen if you've never heard it before...
MP3:
