Various Artists

Happy Land

Genre: ELECTRONIC

MP3
FLAC
WAV

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Aphex Twin, Radioactive Lamb, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultramarine, The Black Dog and many others exemplify the nuclear fallout of 2nd wave rave music in the early ‘90s on a strong set scanning the way inner-city UK music was mutated by influential interlopers

‘Happy Land’ takes its title from the Ultramarine track with Robert Wyatt, included here, and also doubles as an ironic metaphor for the state of the UK in the early ‘90s, suffering socio-economic deprivation due to a Tory government who incidentally hated rave music. Rooted in basements rocking to street soul, fields occupied by new age travellers, or warehouses booming to acid house, bleep techno and breakbeat hardcore; rave was then a revolutionary force that brought people of various walks together in spaces beyond the government’s control, exchanging cultural ideas and energies. Those late ‘80s networks of originally Black British and outsider origin, and their musics, would become mutated in translation to purpose during the early-mid ‘90s by a successive wave of largely white artists who chimed into rave’s scenius, syncretising the templates of inner city blues parties and travellers’ long-established free-parties into new forms of music that expressed their cultural plurality and resistance to norms imposed from above.

Holding a keeling nostalgic weight for ravers of a certain age and fluffy disposition, ‘Happy Land’ rolls thru a swathe of enduring examples from that formative era, notably including Richard D. James’ Chicago-inspired percolator ‘Linmiri ≠ Bradley Stryder’, and a glorious Radioactive Lamb beauty indebted to Detroit on ’Bellevedere’, beside Sheffield bleep house blueprints and the treacliest slow acid aces. The Steel City’s multi-cultural make-up was instrumental in incabatign the early Warp sound, as heard here in Cabaret Voltaire’s SoYo roller ‘Soul Vine’ and RHK’s Sandoz ace ‘Armed Response’, while Ultramarine & Robert Wyatt’s title tune hails the era’s fluffier psychedelic side and links back to ’60s social utopianism, and Herbert’s ‘Housewife’ spies how deep house was modified to weirder UK needs. On the ambient tip, Thunderhead The Word By Eden’s slow acid or the sloshing downbeat breaks of Xeper shows how Chicago’s virulent influence and the heaving pressure of blues parties would be mutated in club back rooms and bedrooms, out of authority’s sight, and in a code understood by dancers of all stripes. In an age of artificially fomented “culture wars”, it’s always worth reminding of original rave music’s capacity to transcend the bullshit and unite likeminds - an effective antithesis to the ruling class’ divide & conquer tactics.

MP3 Release (15)