50/Fifty Coming Up: #06 and #05

Today, 808 State and Empirion. And it’s all about the samples.

At #06, 808 State. I thought about 10×10 (for its discotasticness) and Plan 9 (for the guitar) but had to stick with their 1991 classic In Yer Face. This was techno, 808s and breakbeats for the charts, getting to #09 in the UK in 1991. The intro has a sample of what sounds like Alistair Cooke from one of his Letters from America. But I’ve never been able to find the episode from which it was taken, although I have found a few people who’ve had the same difficulty.

Best bit: THAT intro. “There are new forces in the world…a conflict between the generations; a powerful feeling that the American system is failing to deal with the real threats to life: the Bomb, the pollution of air and water, the population explosion, the mounting slums and crime…”

This re-work by Simon Harris is pretty good

At #05, Essex’s Empirion with their only really good track (more here). But what a track. Narcotic Influence dates from 1994 (it was re-released with all sorts of mixes in 1996) and is a sort of acid hard trance record with an industrial background – but greater than the sum of its parts. From the opening sample, this track is clear in its intent. But it’s the bassline that really makes it. But this record also symbolises me as a sad trainspotter, in that that I had the 1994 release and X really, really wanted it but I couldn’t bear to part with it.

Best bit: Got to be “Giving them drugs, taking their lives away” Barbara Crampton, from Stuart Gordon’s / Brian Yuzna’s 1986 film ‘From Beyond’.

This post is for Bob Glennie of Empirion, who died of a brain tumour in 2005. http://www.facebook.com/empirion.music/info

http://www.empirion.org/

~ by acidted on January 18, 2013.