This weekend I started some preliminary work on a proper old skool rave mix. Rooting around on YouTube I came a cross a couple of videos from ‘Dance Energy‘, the BBC’s token ‘yoof culture’ music program from the early 90’s which featured early performances from The Prodigy, SL2, Run DMC (!), and Bizarre Inc. (embedded below).

I remember watching this when I was a kid -- if memory serves it was repeated fairly early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. The host, Normski, gets slagged a lot but I always thought he was cool. Was probably geared out of his box, mind, as I imagine most of the dancers and indeed the performers in the above video were (love some of those seemingly wireless drum machines). Still, there’s no denying that ‘Playing With Knives’ is stone cold, cast-iron, bona fide, er… most definitive, classic of the genre. It grabs you right from the opening piano stabs, speeds through a combination of gleefully instructive vocal hooks (‘gotta get up, got ta feel good’) and climaxes with some strangely mournful strings. And that’s the thing about a lot of rave stuff: for all it’s surface day-glo euphoria, there’s a curious sadness to a lot of the songs -- piano-based tunes in particular. Zomby understands this, which is probably why his track ‘Float’, from ‘Where Were U In ‘92?‘, which homages (that is, rips off wholesale) the riff from ‘Playing With Knives’ is one of the most evocative from that release.

I’m not sure yet whether ‘Playing With Knives’ will make it into my mix. In some ways, it’s almost too good, too powerful -- what can you possibly follow it with? Maybe it could be a set closer but then that circular piano riff just begs to be repeated and to simply fade it out seems a shame. We’ll see. The mix (hopefully) will be finished some time this week as well as (all going to plan) the next Made In Glitch Podcast.

Now though, to the bedmobile!