FANTASY TAPES

Pivotal Pirate Vol.1

Genre: JUNGLE / FOOTWORK

Cassette

Boomkat Product Review:

Excavated madness capturing the dawn of Hardcore on this previously unknown DJ Hype mixtape dated to 1990/91 and landing at the bleeding cross-section of acid, techno, breaks and bleeps. This tape has been assembled and released in aid of Manchester’s homeless - all profits donated to Lifeshare (https://www.lifeshare.org.uk).

If you grew up in the UK during the 1990’s, DJ Hype’s name was practically inescapable as one of the leading DJ’s of UK hardcore, jungle and D&B - even if you weren’t old to enough to rave, his name was literally plastered in chunky bold text on neon posters affixed to traffic lights, railings, and kebab shop windows everywhere, probably listed above or below Fabio & Grooverider and Andy C, or so we seem to remember. Basically his reputation preceded him as a proper chuffing badboy DJ, and this mixtape rips it right back to the emergence of his influential style, when he applied US hip hop DJing tekkers to rave with inexorable effect, scratching up Belgian mentasms with aggy funk breaks, fast rap and body-slamming techno.

All credit where it counts; this style was a properly London affair, and no doubt it was DJs such as Hype and Fabio & Grooverider who willed it into existence in a reinforced feedback loop between the DJs and dancers. This mixtape epitomises the style in nearly 90 minutes of reckless chops and pure, driving energy taking in classic nutty business such as Underkut’s new beat-sampling ‘Both Ends’ and The Vision’s lethal Detroit banger ‘Liberation Radio’ among them, plus some contemporaneous cheeseballs, in a pyroclastic flow of ruffneck madness that brilliantly does not know where to let up. By the end of the ‘90s the term “eclecticism” was played-out and worthless, but at the dawn of rave Hype defined it at its rudest, precisely as you’ll hear here.

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