It is hard to believe that 15 years ago a whole bunch of us were wearing baggy pants, waving glowsticks, and gurning like nutters in squatted warehouses and fields, trying to climb in to bassbins and the like. Homages have been made to ragga jungle (Rewind Records, Soundmurderer, SK-1, and almost the entire breakcore contingent), bleep & bass (most recently by Neil Landstrumm), EBM and Belgian new beat (V/VM) and acid house (Luke Vibert and a legion of acid revivalists), but rarely if ever have homages been made to the cheesiest period of breakbeat rave – 1992. Piano vamps, mentasm stabs, chipmunk vocals, horror and sci-fi samples, and endless bouncy breakbeats – not yet choppy enough to be jungle, this was a time when mass market low end sampling technology, Ecstasy and pop music collided and exploded. Full of saccharine uplift, the Ecstasy rush was yet to turn sour and go darkside as it would with jungle.
But here it is, Glowstyx and it is hilariously good. Jason Kohnen, better known as Bong-Ra has always been exploring ways to mutate breakcore in interesting ways playing with jazz and drone as the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation/Kilamanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and metal as Grindkrusher, amongst others, but here as Glowstyx he has turned out a prettty authentic period flashback. The beats are a little crisper and slightly more chopped, the bass a little deeper and better produced, but the stabs and vamps are just as energising and the helium divas just as irritatingly catchy as they were in 1992.
Minimalism, bah! Maximalism!
I can’t hear you? I can’t hear you? . . . . Let the bass kick!
Sebastian Chan
