Friday, November 13, 2015

Enforcers 4

A talisman of an E.P. for me





Those two tracks especially, but also this one



This one I had no memory of at all though - and even playing it again now it doesn't ring any bells



But with the Tek 9 and the Manix - that whole AA side of Enforcers Volume 4  - that was one of the key moments when I realised.... this stuff was way more musical than the stuff at that time that was considered to be properly musical....   that this stuff was far in advance of the stuff that most folks then considered superior

The other EPs have many high moments

Vol 6 / Vol 7 double-pack almost eclipses Vol 4 just for these two tracks



Myerson - a God for all time - just for that one tune. Flora Purim like a tropical bird flitting through the rain forest....



Neil Trix  ! Name that movie sample...

Incredibly fond of Vol. 8 also on account of this gorgeous gorgeous remix of Tek 9's "Slow Down" by the Man Like Nookie



And this collab between Gerald and Goldie also delightful





The Enforcers series concept was something like  "probes" - music that was "forward" for the scene, a bit ahead even for Reinforced (the scene's vanguard, alongside Moving Shadow)

The picture disc thing Reinforced was doing with this series (and for a few other releases) was saying "this is something special.... something to have, hold, keep, cherish.... this is artcore"

I think I have them all.... at least the first run of when-it-was-essential....  the early ones picked up well after the time of their release ....

One, bizarrely, I found in CD-single form - Vol 3 I think.  I'm pretty certain I came across that in the discount annex of Tower in New York!  That's where had washed up a sizeable number of CD-singles put out by optimistic UK technorave independent labels in 91-92 - during the boom years, when Suburban Base and so forth were having chart hits -   they must have been imported and distributed by Tower only to never find their market and washed up in the clearance annex....   I found a CD single of Nasty Habits there, a CD-single of 4 Hero Journey From the Light, a Moving Shadow CD EP too I think.... various odds and sods on even smaller labels. All on CD-single!

But I digress. Early on, the Enforcers series is not solid gold, but always interesting....















That was on Vol 3 - a surprisingly small fraction of which EP is on YouTube, I discovered

"Rolling Like Scottie" is up there but embedding disabled.

This is the unreleased original that was remixed for Vol 3





Vol 5 was a strong one but for some reason doesn't linger in the memory like the EPs that flank it on either side temporally









When did I stop bothering with the series? I'm not sure I got the 9 / 10 double-pack. Seemed like it was running out of steam a bit....





No recollection at all of Vol. 11 / 12







Vol 13 / 14 seems to be folding back on the label's own history





I was gone by this point... swept into UKG and 2step


Then a long gap .... more than a decade? - until Vol. 15/ 16

2 comments:

spaceman said...

holy crap -- that myerson track ('find yourself') brings back memories. gorgeous stuff. what happened to jaimie? honestly i had only the dimmest idea of the battles going on (trance = authentic vs. jungle = yuck etc.) in the early/mid '90s -- I was just listening to a ton of stuff without context, without any sense of the stakes inherent these battles. at least that's what it seemed like living in a small-ish town in new england at the time.

spaceman said...

holy crap -- that myerson track ('find yourself') brings back memories. gorgeous stuff. what happened to jaimie? honestly i had only the dimmest idea of the battles going on (trance = authentic vs. jungle = yuck etc.) in the early/mid '90s -- I was just listening to a ton of stuff without context, without any sense of what was at stake in the friction between the sub/micro/macro genres. at least that's what it seemed like living in a small-ish town in new england at the time.