Futuromania: Project Future

Interesting post by Derek Walmsley at Slow Motion blog, based on his research for liner notes for a new Soul Jazz compilation: Electro Throwdown: Sci-Fi Inter-Planetary Electro Attack On Planet Earth 1982–89. There's stuff about Record Mirror disco/club trax reviewer James Hamilton and his obsession with monitoring the b.p.m. of tracks.

Kind of a prequel to rave, electro - a full-on blast of futurism on every level: sonically, but also graphically, dance-moves wise, clothing, the wildstyle graffiti, you name it.

Like acid / rave / ardkore / jungle, it was like there was a race on to get to the future first and as fast as possible. To do everything in the newest, freshest, breaks-with-the-past way possible.

Many of the people whose heads were turned by electro - literally turned, what with spinning on their heads etc on bits of lino they'd brought down to the shopping arcade - went on to be major players in bleep and British first-wave techno. LFO, Autechre, et al. Jungle too: Danny Breaks (aka Dantronix), Acen.

Of course it began in Anglika - and Germanika.

But when it returned to the source as this Bronxed-up distorted-and-intensified reflection, it felt like a visitation from another planet. A new sound, a new dance. Kids signed up instantly.

Look at this ghostly clip of bodypoppin' on the London Underground for a real "lost future" shiver.

Featuring Goldie and 3D (or is it even Bansky?) and - inadvertently - Hilary.

What's all this then? Via Sean Albiez, use of the word "electro" in 1945!

Proof of my belief that whenever you think you've definitively located the first use of a music genre term, it'll aways recede further back into the past

Me on 1980s "street beats culture" - the unused intro cut out from my V4Visions liner note.

During the 1980s, before the U.K.’s house raveolution kicked off, a more diffuse dance music culture existed in the country oriented around “street beats” and largely based around imported tracks from America. Indeed there was a label called StreetSounds created by the canny young entrepreneur Morgan Khan to cater for this demand among British youth, in the form of sharply designed compilation LPs that pulled together at an affordable price singles that cost far more to buy separately as import 12-inches.

Starting with the iconic Electro series (ten volumes released between 1983-85) and soon diversifying to cover adjacent genres like jazz-funk, rare grooves, and slow jams, StreetSounds reflected the way that young British taste didn’t stick within the tighter boundaries that prevailed in the USA. Perhaps because the music arrived precisely as an exotic import unrooted in a local community and its musical tradition, British dance fans were able to embrace a bit of everything.

Although StreetSounds’s scope didn’t extend as far as Jamaican music (other UK labels, like Greensleeves were already on the case), genres like lover’s rock and dancehall were also on the street beats menu. That led to homegrown and distinctively UK-flavored scenes like fast chat reggae. But the jumble of sounds coming across from Jamaica and America, and the porousness between genres and scenes in the U.K., also meant that Caribbean bass-pressure and patois-rich vocals merged with a series of American rhythmic advances. The result was a succession of only-in-Britain hybrids: sounds system soul, bleep-and-bass, ragga-techno, jungle, trip hop, 2step garage… Virtually all the elements came from overseas, but the agglomeration of them was uniquely U.K.

This 1980s street beats culture was the wellspring for so many crucial clusters of innovation and vibe that emerged during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: Soul II Soul’s funki dredd sound and look; the Bristol nexus of The Wild Bunch and Smith & Mighty that in turn begat Massive Attack, Nellee Hooper, Portishead and Tricky; “fast rap” collective turned breakbeat rave doyens Shut Up and Dance and their associates The Ragga Twins; Double Trouble pop star turned proto-junglist turned born-again Rasta Michael West a.k.a. Rebel MC a.k.a. Conquering Lion a.k.a. Congo Natty; the label Production House, best known for hardcore rave anthems by Acen, Baby D and The House Crew but rooted in ‘80s Britsoul via co-founder Phil Fearon’s hitmaking past in the group Galaxy....

The amazing, perfect artwork for the StreetSounds comps.