Rave Digging: SL2 - "Way In My Brain"

If you're familiar with SL2 at all, it's probably more for "On A Ragga Tip" than this number. But as good as that was, I always preferred "Way In My Brain". Always seemed a bit more jaunty, if early 90s breakbeat rave can be described as such without inviting ridicule. It can't? Cuh.

SL2 featured legendary DJ Matt "Slipmatt" Nelson, who I was all set to see at some bar in Canterbury once, but he never showed up. Crushing it was, at the time. Pretty sure I caught him at Bagleys some other time, although my memory of the occasion is hazy, to put it mildly. Anyway, time to flail your arms around before putting them in the air for the piano bit, I reckon...

Posted by Stuart Waterman on April 24, 2008 12:22 PM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: Bizarre Inc - Such A Feeling

What was it about the early days of rave that prompted so many young men to cultivate slightly manky-looking ponytails? Another question: Why am I looking for logic from a movement powered almost entirely by MDMA and nerve-battering breakbeats?

Here are Bizarre Inc showing just how reckless they were back in the day by dancing on top of a load of TVs. They weren't quite so happy when they woke up the next day, as they found their warranty from Comet to be VOID.

[video: chrisf242]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on March 24, 2008 8:50 AM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: Liquid - "Sweet Harmony"

I'm pretty sure Liquid's "Sweet Harmony" has been remixed and / or re-released every other year since it originally appeared in 1992. Maybe that's my mind playing tricks on me though - it could be one of those hands-in-the-air classics that's always just been around. If you've had a heavy weekend and you're trying your hardest to hold onto the fast-receding memories, this one might put a smile on your face. Or make you weep at the fact that it's Monday again. Um...

[video: xaddictedtobassx]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on March 17, 2008 12:35 PM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: Altern 8 - "Activ 8" (plus bonus vintage news report)

It's interesting to remember just how dangerous the whole rave thing seemed when it first came to widespread attention. It was so feared that the Sunday People had an Acid Rave Correspondent, for goodness' sake! Don't believe me? Check out the report on the phenomenon from 1988, below. Then click over and see boiler-suited loons Altern8's "Activ-8" from a few years later, showing that not only was the rave scene not going away, but it was fully intent on messing up your beloved Top 40.

[video: Mayhemdog]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on March 10, 2008 9:51 AM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: Urban Hype - "A Trip To Trumpton"

Just in case you were under the impression that Crazy Frog-type ringtone bollocks was a new phenomenon, check out Urban Hype's preposterous contribution to the "toytown rave" genre from the early 90s. It hardly needs saying that the video contains a fair amount of gurning.

[video: impeachblair1 - yeah, man]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on March 3, 2008 10:43 AM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: Stakker's "Humanoid"

Not many people know this, but when I was young (very young) I was a house DJ. I was ten years old and cajoled into playing at a buncha illegal raves out in the Northern sticks around 1990. So when we got a new category called Rave Digging, I could barely contain my glee. Why? I wanted to share acid monster 'Humanoid' by Stakker. Now, Stakker may look like a one-hitter, but it's actually the monicker for the fabulous Future Sound of London. So, you get off on the 303 abuse and I'll recall thousands of sweaty ravers going mad to this while I received my payment of a bottle of pop and a variety bag of crisps. Child slave labour never tasted so good.

[video: Nouveauxromo]

Posted by Mof Gimmers on February 26, 2008 12:02 PM in Rave Digging| Video
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Rave Digging: The Prodigy - "Everybody In The Place"

HONK! HONNNNK! NEW FEATURE ALERT!!! BLOW YOUR WHISTLESSSSSS!!!

What's your name? Where you from? Are you on one? Are ya, matey? What's your name? Where you from? Are you-

And so on. Can you guess what this feature's about yet, readership? If you answered "I think it might be a look at the time in the early to mid-nineties when cheap but enormously popular rave tunes started gatecrashing our beloved Top 40", you'd be bang on. Matey.

With "nu-rave" - or at least the clothes inspired by the term - apparently not going away, now's as good a time as any to revisit the days when young men would risk torn knee ligaments just to show that they could dance like Leeroy from The Prodigy (which they couldn't).

And where better to start than with the Essex boys themselves - one of the first acts to take the rave movement into the charts?

Posted by Stuart Waterman on February 25, 2008 8:30 AM in Rave Digging| Video
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