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Hugh_Mane

@hugh_mane

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Releases on Harvey’s Mercury Rising, Running Back, Adult Contemporary. LINK TREE FOR THE EP - FOLLOWS FOR TOMMOROWS ✋

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Some records belong to the hours after.

Beyond’s Ambient Dub Volume 1: The Big Chill was a big afters CD in the 90s. Released in August 1992, it began with a pressing of just 1,000 CDs.

Beyond was based in Birmingham, where Higher Intelligence Agency were developing their music through the Oscillate nights: playing records, then slipping live electronic pieces between them. Their Ketamine Entity appears on the album alongside Banco De Gaia’s Desert Wind and Soufie.

You can hear sound system culture filtering through by osmosis: bass holding the room together, dub echoes opening it out. Those ideas travelled into clubs and the spaces people gathered in afterwards.

At the same time, samplers, sequencers and MIDI were putting increasingly ambitious recording within reach. HIA’s home setup included an Atari computer, analogue synths and an Akai sampler. They mixed their instruments live onto DAT, catching a performance as it happened.

A home studio could feed a culture. A small independent label could carry that music into somebody else’s front room.

This plain white-label 12" takes four tracks from the compilation: Original Rockers’ Sexy Selector, 21st Century Aura’s Disorientation, Banco De Gaia’s Desert Wind and Mimoid’s Strawberry.

The CD did the whole room. This one gives you four pieces of it. by @hugh_mane

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12 days ago

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19 days ago

Warriors Dance never sounded like London trying to imitate Chicago.

It sounded like London taking house music into a room already full of other histories.

Tony Addis established Addis Ababa Studios at 389 Harrow Road in 1980, at a time when very few London studios properly served Black musicians. Reggae, dub, soul, hip-hop and African music all passed through the basement. Aswad, Dennis Brown, Matumbi, Tony Allen and Soul II Soul were among those who worked there.

When house arrived, Tony Addis and Kid Batchelor built Warriors Dance around it.

The label launched in 1987, but the music carried everything the studio had absorbed before then. Kid would road-test new productions at Confusion, helping records like Bang The Party’s Release Your Body, The Addis Posse’s Let The Warriors Dance and No Smoke’s Koro-Koro find their way out of the basement and onto dance floors.

I remember Confusion on Shaftesbury Avenue, and I was also a regular at Subterania just off Portobello Road. Coming from deepest Surrey this was a considerable effort, but so worth it. That whole stretch of West London felt joined up by records, basements and people moving between scenes.

No Smoke’s International Smoke Signal LP arrived in 1990 and perhaps tells the Warriors Dance story better than anything else.

Koro-Koro opens it, but the whole album is remarkable. Breakbeats, deep house, acid, dub pressure and African rhythm all living together without sounding forced.

Then there is the title track, featuring Manu Dibango on sax, with additional production from Jazzie B.

Not London copying Chicago.

London answering in its own language. by @hugh_mane

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22 days ago

It seems @taron.egerton has discovered Signs by @ms.ray___.

Excellent taste, Taron. More people should hear it.

There aren’t many records that reach into the parts of the human experience that are not so easy to explain. Records that seem to recognise something in you before you have found the words for it. Signs is one of those records.

I came across it last year and was amazed that it seemed to be passing by so quietly. I went looking for a vinyl release and found there wasn’t one, which genuinely pissed me off.

Some records just need preserving in physical form. This felt like one of them.

Signs originally appeared in 2024 and has now finally made it onto vinyl as part of the MELT EP on @scenic____route. Hearing it properly through the Klipschorns, the voice suspended in the room and all that space around it, only confirms how special it is.

Lovely to see Taron putting it in front of a much bigger audience while Ms Ray is out on tour.

So, @taron.egerton, what caught you first? Maybe it was a Sign

Ms Ray
Signs
MELT
Scenic Route, 2026 by @hugh_mane

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a month ago

What’s an 18-year-old singer with a street soul pedigree got to do with Kylie Minogue?

This South London house record.

Julie Stapleton wrote Where’s Your Love Gone? with Alex Palmer, co-founder of V4 Visions, when she was 18. Released on the label in 1991, it sits in that lovely space where street soul, lovers rock and deep house meet.

Then, three years later, Kylie covered it.

The title became Where Has the Love Gone? and it appeared on her self-titled 1994 album. Pete Heller and Terry Farley were at the controls. Seven minutes and forty-six seconds, with proper house people making a pop record on their own terms.

It is easy for Kylie to become the headline. But the song, the writing and the story all begin with Julie.

Another reason to read the small print on the records in your shelves.

JULIE STAPLETON
WHERE’S YOUR LOVE GONE?
V4 VISIONS, 1991 by @hugh_mane

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a month ago

Back in the day, the algorithm stood behind a counter.

Thursday was import day at Jazzy M’s Vinyl Zone in Fulham. I was in there every week, spending my ill-gotten gains on US imports, R&B and whatever else was good. If you listened to the people behind the counter, you could find yourself several weeks ahead of the crowd.

One of those people was Julian Jonah.

Most old heads will know Jealousy And Lies well. Released on Cooltempo in 1988, it remains one of my favourite UK house records. Deep, restrained and completely sure of itself.

What surprises me is how far under the radar it seems to have slipped with newer house heads. Perhaps some records become so familiar to one generation that nobody remembers to introduce them to the next.

JJ is still producing through Jus Groove, now leaning into beautifully made soul and funk. I am still quietly waiting for the house return.

Until then, this one remains essential.

JULIAN JONAH
JEALOUSY AND LIES
COOLTEMPO, 1988 by @hugh_mane

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a month ago

This is not an early-evening record.

It belongs late, late in the night, when everyone has imbibed enough for the room to change shape. A hot, humid basement. Red light, strobe throbbing. Dancers wet through. Poppers in the dank air. Sketchy leather-clad bears lurking in dark corners.

Then Robert Owens arrives. The voice of house music. Not decoration, not nostalgia, but soul applied directly to the moment.

The It’s Donnie arrived on DJ International in 1986, produced by Chip E. and Larry Heard. Nearly forty years later, it still sounds less like history than a private transmission from the basement.

The It. Donnie. by @hugh_mane

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a month ago

There are thousands of records like this: not quite forgotten, just waiting in the gaps.

Deep Sensation, Five Track Extended Play. Deep Jazz Records, 2003.

Twenty-three years later, it still sounds completely relevant. by @hugh_mane

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a month ago

Harvey at MOS this weekend, where a chance encounter with a balearic time traveler whips out his phone and proceeds to show you a picture of your big sister at Shoom some 30 +years ago. by @hugh_mane

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2 months ago

Happy 808 day everyone by @hugh_mane

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2 months ago

Hot volume, hot track AVA Records comp - solid all round by @hugh_mane

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2 months ago

Caution :HOT by @hugh_mane

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2 months ago