Forty Five Minutes Of Renegade Soundwave

As promised last Sunday here's my forty five minute long Renegade Soundwave mix. Listening to them this week to pull this together was very enjoyable- they made many very good records, singles, remixes and albums, operating a little below the radar, but their sound would be picked up by acts that become much bigger and more successful (I'd be very surprised if both The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy didn't own some RSW records). Formed in London in 1986 RSW were a three piece outfit, Gary Asquith, Carl Bonnie and Danny Briottet. Their early records were a collision of hip hop, industrial and sampling with a large side order of dub. Over time the rhythms and sounds of acid house worked their way to the fore along with the breakbeats of early 90s jungle. In 1990 they signed to Mute and released four albums before splitting up in 1995. Renegade Soundwave seem very much a London act, the pubs, clubs, people, sounds and substances of the city transmitted onto black plastic. 

This mix only scratches the surface and I left out the Leftfield remix of Renegade Soundwave, possibly (as discussed earlier this week) the greatest remix/ club track of all time. Given that it's been on this blog twice already in the last seven days, putting it into this selection felt gratuitous. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Renegade Soundwave

• Renegade Soundwave
• Women Respond To Bass (12" Vocal Mix)
• Biting My Nails (Bassnumb Chapter)
• Positive ID
• Brixton (Sabres Of Paradise remix)
• Thunder
• Brixton (Dub Mix)
• Probably A Robbery

Their title track, a 1994 single, is led by acoustic guitar and a vocal about coming back from a house party with crunchy drums and cavernous bass. The song also features the deadpan Teutonic sounding woman intoning their name- a two word snippet of song that often pops into my head and has me  repeating the words 'renegade soundwave' apropos of nothing.

Women Respond To Bass was a 1992 single with a pilfered BMW logo on the disc and eye catching sleeve. Scientific veracity of the statement in song's title may be required- happily the bassline of this song is so good that everyone and anyone should respond to it. The woman saying 'renegade soundwave' appears in this song too. 

Biting My Nails came out in 1988, heavy and industrial, the sound of RSW before acid house hit them. 

Positive ID is one of my favourite RSW songs, a catchy and funky and released in an array of versions and mixes. The version here is the Radio Mix and it's a song which really should have got them some radio play. 

Sabres Of Paradise remixed Brixton, a 1995 12" single, Weatherall, Kooner and Burns going for the megathump with a high pitched top note and a single line of vocal, 'I'm checking out her rhythms'. The Dub Mix is by RSW. 

Thunder came out in 1990, sampling Perry Como and an early 90s classic with its sternum hitting bassline, crackles of guitar, enormous drums and wobbling synth sounds. In fact looking back now, its as good as anything else that came out in that year- and 1990 was by no means a fallow year for dance music. 

Probably A Robbery was the only RSW single that cracked the charts, a number 38 hit in January 1990. Rico Conning and Mute's Daniel Miller mixed it- the B-side Ozone Breakdown should have featured in this mix too. The vocal is very funny, a tongue in cheek celebration of a life of crime- 'Because its probably a robbery/ A bit of skullduggery/ The funniest thing I wanted to sing/ But the notes wouldn't come my way'. They made a video for Probably A Robbery too... 

Thunder

The Leftfield mix I posted on Sunday sent me back to Renegade Soundwave, digging out their records and CDs. The Leftfield remix of Renegade Soundwave, included in my mix, caused a little bit of internet excitement with Jesse leaving the following comment on social media - 'The RSW remix is the greatest remix of all time, and maybe the best electronic club track ever. To do that much with only the dynamics - the build, the tension, the power - it's just sublime. There's hardly anything to the track, musically, maybe 2 and a half riffs, and it manages to be hairs-on-end thrilling from start to finish'. As a result I thought I should post the remix in its own right so we can all appreciate its magnificence. 

Renegade Soundwave (The Leftfield Remix)

There's no denying its got as much oomph, as much taut energy and sonic thump as anything else from the period. The first two minutes build to the sonic equivalent of a dam breaking as the beat kicks in- after that they keep it going, a torrent of Leftfield and RSW combined.

While I think about putting together a forty minute Renegade Soundwave mix here's another of their finest moments, Thunder from 1990. A high pitched string stab, some wobbly guitar, a breakbeat the size of Brixton and a bassline that does indeed sound like thunder. Crunchy industrial dub for a Tuesday during the October half term holiday.  

Thunder

Forty Five Minutes Of Leftfield

I was listening to Leftism recently, Leftfield's 1995 debut album, an album that takes in sublime ambient house (Melt, Song Of Life), bass heavy dub techno pounders (Release The Pressure, Afro- Left) and eye catching guest vocalists (John Lydon on Open Up, Toni Halliday on Original). It was this Top of The Pops repeat that had me digging Leftism out, a 1995 appearance with a blonde Toni moonlighting from Curve and looking every inch the goth- dance star...

The back to back pairing of Melt and Song Of Life, tracks three and four, were the two that struck me the most this time around, a gorgeous way to spend ten minutes. The closing 21st Century Poem also had me appreciating it anew. I began a Sunday forty minute Leftfield mix and immediately had the problem of too many songs, many that are eight, nine or ten minutes long plus a load of remixes. In the end I've gone mainly for mid- 90s Leftfield, Neil Barnes and Paul Daley's glory years, tracks from subsequent albums/ versions of the group left for another time. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Leftfield

• Fanfare Of Life
• Release The Pressure (Adrian Sherwood Mix)
• Renegade Soundwave (The Leftfield Remix)
• Nothing (Extended Version)
• Melt
• Release The Pressure (The Rough Dub)
• Original
• Open Up (I Hate Pink Floyd Mix)

Fanfare of Life is a version of Song Of Life, Leftfield's fourth single, out in 1992, a masterful piece of optimistic ambient house. The Fanfare version also showed up on Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno, a definitive mid- 90s compilation. There are a pair of Underworld remixes either of which probably could and should have featured on this mix. 

Release The Pressure appears twice, once in its 2019 re- released Adrian Sherwood remix version. You can never have too much Sherwood. The Rough Dub came out on 12" in 1992, Neil and Paul with Earl Sixteen on vox, a dark and deep, epic thumper.  

Renegade Soundwave were a London three piece, much underrated and unappreciated in some ways. Their singles  Women Respond To Bass, The Phantom, Positive ID, Probably A Robbery, Renegade Soundwave and Brixton are all worth spending time with as are their albums, the 1990 In Dub especially. This Leftfield remix of their title track came out in 1994.

Sandals were a beat poetry/ progressive house group who I thought were great, briefly. Several singles and an album with Paul Daley and Neil Barnes producing, mixing and remixing. Nothing was a 1992 single, with the whispered line 'Old man, what have you done?' just as pertinent now as it was then. There are old men all round the globe making the world a worse place aren't there?

'The film starts/ the film ends', Toni Halliday says as Leftfield's heavy bass and beats stomp on around her on Original. Toni was the vocalist in Curve, a duo with Dean Garcia who made a run of electronic rock/ goth dance singles- they've been featured recently over at The Vinyl Villain. While the dance music guest vocalist thing quickly became standard Leftfield's collaborations with Toni and John Lydon were attention grabbing in the mid- 90s. They put John Lydon back on the cover of the music press, somewhere he hadn't been for some time. Lydon's vocal on Open Up is the stuff of legend, a reborn, angry and exhilarating vocal from the former PiL/ Pistol, stridently taking down Hollywood and the film industry. The I Hate Pink Floyd Mix is by Sabres Of Paradise slowing the song down to an industrial dub grind, a PiL influenced remix by Weatherall, Kooner and Burns. 

Thunder Underbelly

Some epic leftfield music from Renegade Soundwave back in 1990 for a Saturday in early June. This is Thunder, techno/ electro built around a pounding breakbeat, a throbbing dubby bassline and a distorted guitar sample or two, intense dance music made for hot nights in dark nightclubs. There's a Perry Como sample buried in there too. Superb sounding stuff, over three decades since it was released. 

Thunder

From a few years later, 1994, this is Renegade Soundwave remixing Pop Will Eat Itself, a dark, dubbed out, claustrophobic, industrial piece of music, with samples this time from Tom Waits and Jeru The Damaja. 

Underbelly (Renegade Soundwave Blackout Mix)

Tristessa

On Saturday night while The Chemical Brothers were block rocking the Other Stage at Glastonbury talk on Twitter turned to the then Dust Brothers 1994 Xmas Dust Up, a cassette given away free with the NME in December 1994. The tape was mixed by Ed and Tom, a window rattling, volume- all-the-way-up, seven song mixtape.

Side 1
The Dust Brothers- Leave Home
Bonus Beats Orchestra- Bonus Beats
The Prodigy- Voodoo People (Dust Brothers Remix)
Depth Charge- Shaolin Buddha Finger

Side 2
Renegade Soundwave- Renegade Soundwave (Leftfield remix)
Strange Brew- One Summer ('Lektrik Dawn Dub)
Manic Street Preachers- La Tristessa Durera



Just looking at the sleeve and reading the tracklist transports me back to this cassette causing difficulties for the speakers in a red Nissan Micra back in 94/95- it used to get played a lot for a while.

Bonus Beats Orchestra was Tom and Ed Dust/Chemical under another name. Depth Charge were ace, the 9 Deadly Venoms album was trip hop and big beat before either really got going, and chock full of samples from martial arts films and horror movies. I've posted Renegade Soundwave before and the Leftfield remix is particularly good. Strange Brew were a duo from Manchester, one half of whom, Jake Purdy, lived down our street when we were kids. We'd long lost touch by the mid 90s but used to knock around in a gang all the time in the mid 80s. Funny to have a little childhood, local connection with a free NME cassette. Helpfully someone has transferred their copy of the tape digitally and uploaded it to Youtube. The beats sound quite timelocked but as a whole this still sounds fairly fresh I think.





The Dust Brothers would become The Chemical Brothers not long afterwards. Their remix of La Tristessa Durera was done while still Dust and isn't subtle-  squealing noises from the start, various samples from Ed and Tom's pile of odds and ends, lots of sirens and James' vocal. La Tristessa Durera- the sadness endures forever- was written by Richie taking the point of view of a war veteran wheeled out once a year on Poppy Day as a 'cenotaph souvenir', poverty causing him to sell his medal. It is one of the best early Manics songs, showing behind the eyeliner, shock quotes and bluster there was some genuine talent.

La Tristessa Durera (From A Scream To A Sigh) (Chemical [Dust] Brothers Remix)

Renegade Soundwave

I was reminded of this at the weekend, a lengthy techno workout from 1994, Leftfield remixing Renegade Soundwave. Moody, thumpy, acidic and very, very good indeed. Sounds like part of a soundtrack to a journey by train at dusk.

Renegade Soundwave (Leftfield Remix)

Claudio Caniggia

Bass-O-Matic were William Orbit's 90s house outfit who hit the top ten with Fascinating Rhythm, a single I have a lot of time for- early 90s positivity, pianos, a rap from MC Inna Onestep and the lovely vocals of Sharon Musgrave.



For a sultry and less poppy take on Fascinating Rhythm Renegade Soundwave offered up this version, also a tribute to  Claudio Caniggia, Argentina's long haired forward at Italia 90, a man fouled three times as he danced and dribbled his way through Cameroon's defence before being scythed down. This being Renegade Soundwave the focus is very much on the bass.

Fascinating Rhythm (Claudio Caniggia Mix)

I'm Checking Out Her Rhythms

One of the home made cd compilations I found in a box recently had a bunch of Sabres Of Paradise remixes on it, which have been happily soundtracking some of my recent journeys. This one stands out- a particularly dark and thumpy remix of Renegade Soundwave from 1995. 'I'm checking out her rhythms' the buried vocal intones.

Brixton (Sabres Of Paradise Remix)

The dub mix from the 12" is also pretty essential. Renegade Soundwave have a back catalogue full of rhythms that are worth checking out.

Brixton (Dub)

Bass Reprise

A bit more Renegade Soundwave for your Sunday evening- a version of Women Respond To Bass (an assertion that I'm no nearer to clearing up). Acid Ted's been posting a load of RS as well. You can probably squeeze some in before the closing ceremony.

Women Respond To Bass (Women Respond In Heaven)

Bass Response

Renegade Soundwave's Women Respond To Bass- a short follow up post. Here's the track at youtube- very 1992 and none the poorer for it. I may have to go seeking a vinyl copy of this.



And as Ctel pointed out in the comments box this morning, there's more Renegade Soundwave here and amazingly the links are still live over four years after the posting.

And Tedloaf likes this one. I do too.

Robbery

Women Respond To Bass was the title of a 1992 Renegade Soundwave single. Unfortunately I don't have it, but the title always stuck with me. I don't know if they had any scientific basis for this claim. They formed in 1986, doing that late 80s dance thing of trying to combine house, hip hop, dub, sampling and industrial music into one dancefloor friendly noise. With a definite London edge to the vocals. Probably A Robbery was the nearest they came to a hit, reaching number 38 in 1989.

Probably A Robbery

Back to work with a bang today.