Comprehensive doesn’t come close. 45 tracks from the last 33 years of one of the UK’s most overlooked and important innovators in dance music - Bradford’s Unique 3.
Bleep was the first truly UK sound that I got into in the late 80s and though it rapidly splintered into various sub-genres, the sound of the Northern rave still holds up strong now. ALL UK Bass Music comes from Unique 3’s first single ‘The Theme’ and Jungle and Drum & Bass owe everything to their AMEN break sampling ‘Activity’ (the first dance act to sample the ubiquitous loop). Goldie, The Chemical Brothers, Coldcut and of course the band most synonymous with Bleep, LFO, site Unique 3 as one of the most influential flashpoints in their respective careers.
This huge compilation put together by the band’s Edzy is chockful of remastered classics, unheard mixes/edits and previously unreleased music from 1988 through to their later work in the 2000’s. Their pioneering and fearless approach to creating music blended UK Hip Hop, House, proto-Jungle, Detroit techno and whatever Rave was through a Yorkshire working class prism and were the Big Bang that made Warp Records set up a label in neighbouring Sheffield.
As Matt Anniss author of ‘Join the Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music’ says …
‘All of British bass music can be traced back to Bleep Techno. The first 'Bleep' record was made in 1988 by Unique 3 and the Mad Musician, 'The Theme’. The story of Unique 3 is the story of British bass music.’
As the years followed ‘The Theme’, Unique 3 continued banging them out. Ragga-jungle, UKG, Drum & Bass and House were added to the sound and you can find all of these constructs within this massive compilation. Not for phone listening, everything here has BASS, lots of bass, attitude and at times, dread. It still sounds like the future…
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