Explore through time
Time is how this archive is organised. Pick a year and you get what the record shows for it: the releases, the rooms, the labels, the broadcasts and the objects, in the order they happened. The gaps stay visible.
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By decade
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Combat Dancin' EP
Combat Dancin' EP
Carries “Mr Kirk’s Nightmare”, the record that put Reinforced on the map and sold past 24,000 copies. The source gives the year only.
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Moving Shadow founded
Moving Shadow founded
Rob Playford's label, and a focal point for bedroom producers around Stevenage before it was formally a label at all. The Shadow catalogue prefix starts in 1991.
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Suburban Base founded
Suburban Base founded
Danny Donnelly's label, run out of the Boogie Times record shop in Romford. Took hardcore into the Top 40 twice inside a year.
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Kool FM begins broadcasting
Kool FM begins broadcasting
An unlicensed station broadcasting from Clapton on 94.5 FM, and one of the defining broadcast homes for hardcore and jungle through the decade.
Sources
RAM Records founded
RAM Records founded
Renegade Snares
Renegade Snares
Released as Volume 3. Breakbeat science and a vocal hook that carried well past the rave.
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The Touch / Valley of the Shadows
The Touch / Valley of the Shadows
Valley of the Shadows was the B-side and outsold the A-side comfortably. Recorded, according to the source, in four hours. Reissued in 1996 as RAMM 16.
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Breaks and samples
Sources
Inner City Life
Inner City Life
Credited to Goldie Presents Metalheadz, with Diane Charlemagne on vocals. The record that carried the sound onto daytime radio without softening to get there.
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Metalheadz founded
Metalheadz founded
Founded by Goldie with Kemistry & Storm. A label built around a roster rather than a formula, and the centre of gravity for the darker, more designed end of the music through the decade.
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Metalheadz Sunday Sessions begin
Metalheadz Sunday Sessions begin
A Sunday residency in a small room off Hoxton Square, running roughly 7pm to midnight, and for several years the place the music was tested before it reached anyone else. The launch month is documented; how long it ran is not yet confirmed.
Sources
Timeless
Timeless
The album that forced the wider music press to deal with the music on its own terms rather than as a novelty. Engineered with Rob Playford.
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New Forms
New Forms
Bristol, live instrumentation and a double album that read as a statement about where the music could go next.
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Modus Operandi
Modus Operandi
Drum programming treated as the whole composition. Space, restraint, and an obsession with the edit that still sets a standard.
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New Forms takes the Mercury Prize
New Forms takes the Mercury Prize
A drum & bass record takes the country's most-watched album award, ahead of a shortlist including Radiohead, Suede and the Spice Girls.
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Wormhole
Wormhole
Recorded 1997 to 1998 at Virus Studios, London. Sound design as the point, and the record most often reached for when techstep needs a single reference.