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| Just as the arcade game bleep of electro's first phase found its stride, the dominance of uptown New York began to wane over the sound of hip hop. As feuds and intrigue began to tear apart the crews of Harlem and the Bronx, producers from other boroughs, even other cities, began to rise from the shadows, bringing with them a harsher street level style. Utilising harder sounds, future-primitive drum programming, electro synth bleeps, furious scratch patterns and raw vocal challenges, the playfulness and party focused braggadocio of the first wave was super-ceded by an unsentimental approach that existed in a niche somewhere between electro, hip hop and perhaps even industrial music. Compiled by label boss J. Saul Kane, a devotee of this sound from its earliest days, Beat Classic offers a watertight document of this underground phenomena via a selection of obscure rarities and 12" mixes from the period. From the oscillating flutter of Fantasy Three's "It's Your Rock" to Craig G's "Shout," and the Z-3 MCs "Triple Threat", these are ego-tripped throw downs that challenge all comers; only the foolhardy would step. This is the paranoid sound of the street, and as the repeated imperative 'You Got to Think Twice' finds re-location to various cities throughout the course Rock Master Scott's 'It's Life', the listener is left wondering what exactly they're being told to take heed of; street jackings? Their production style? Their everything? Whereas Steady B's 'Just Call Us Def', with its relentless industrial strength drum patterns and the repetition of 'def!', is a straight up exclamation of the crew's pre-eminence, Hi-Fidelity 3's 'Never Satisfied' is an electro focused club track, with a female vocal that take's the impetus of the Rolling Stone's classic but inverts it in to an Amazonian critique of male impotence; don't challenge the ladies, no matter how def you are, no matter how tuff your beats, you're gonna get burnt. Add to this selection some rare cuts such as the instrumental of Ultra Magnetic MC's 'Funky' and Ramelzee vs. K Rob's much sought after 'Beat Bop', and its clear that this compilation is testament to Kane's credentials and impeccable taste. In addition this, these tracks also illustrate the debt owed to the underground sound of the early eighties by modern genres as diverse as nu-skool electro, break beat, techno and drum n' bass, making this compilation an essential addition to the collections of beat junkies and archivists alike. |
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