Non of the pastiche bollocks Drum and Bass mutated into here please. The real shit from the mid to late 90s.

Fierce, Optical and his brother Matrix. One of the first 12s on Matrix’s own label Metro Recordings. You can tell Matrix’s imput from the simple clean “ one two” tech step drum pattern, and the filtered rolling bass from Optical. Quite a rare record, I used to hammer it.

Two producers at the zenith of thier powers made a dubplate for the Rider’s imprint (Prototype Recordings) and this is the output.

Another roller from Dom and Roland with Optical. This time on Moving Shadow. Check the intro from Dom.

Ed Rush and Optical’s Wormhole album is seminal, relased on Virus Recordings. Still sounds as raw as it did back in 96. All created on analogue gear.

from wikipedia:

In 2016, Optical left a YouTube comment stating, “Half the drums were my original recordings of drummers I know…other half were taken from 70’s funk tunes and resampled many times to get them to sound unique and solid…none of them were sped up as I always cut my drums into individual hits, reprogram them in my sequencer and use them at original pitch to keep their chunky sound intact.”[6]

  • Dan replied to this.

    As I have said many times, this is probably the single greatest electronic song of all time.

      This is still an absolute choon

      Millsy

      Always liked the Full Cycle / V Recordings a bit more than the techy stuff. Maybe because it bore a closer resemblance to hip hop which I was more used to.