This is a story of an elusive song. A ghost, glimpsed in my youth, and its pupil-dilating scent that echoed through my brain for 2 decades.
In 1996 I first heard this break on a grainy overdubbed/over loved B-Boy VHS. A tape that someone's older brother had brought back from Sydney, or even the US, to a small city in New Zealand called Palmerston North. We passed it around, there was a 3 day max holding time, so a binge-watching / absorption method was implemented.
I found one section particularly poignant. A dance session in a hall, the B-Boys were just messing around. Poppin’ and Lockin’ and doing some glides. That break. Like a shimmering utopian future.
That break. Jeez, it sounded like Axel Foley in a Miami Vice cameo doing a stakeout on the Amazon river at sunset. I was aware that Bboys danced to all kinds of music, breaks, funk, disco, and harder true school electro, but I had never heard anything like this before, in this context.
We skated, we raved, to a whole bunch of stuff, from Dave Clark, Metroplex, Strictly Rhythm, Metalheadz & MAW to ATCQ, Lost Boyz, Artifacts, Beastie Boys, and all that magical stuff floating around the street-ether circa ‘96.
That break. I went on to collect records and Dj. Hip-hop, Techno, Jungle / Drum n Bass, then Broken Beat, Disco, Soul, House, everything. Growing up in Wellington NZ late 90s early 00s was one of the best musical educations one could wish for. I still never heard that break. I sung to people, played the riff on the xylophone to jazz musicians after they played in the hope that someone would know it. Nobody did.
“... sounds like a wooden vibraphone plinky-plonk tone. the beat is like electro, but not hard. shuffling kinda. melody has gotta start around G4? maybe? or higher, C5? doonk-d-doonk-doonk-doonk-doonk---d-doonk... like it could be the music playing in a national geographic special on migrational frogs in African rainforests...”
“Nah sorry bro, don’t know it.”
That break though. I was only going on the 20-odd-seconds from the VHS. Now watermarked onto my frontal lobe.
10 years pass, the ghost didn’t visit so much anymore. Then 5 years later (Ca.2011) I found myself In Berlin, accumulating records, Afrobeat, Dance Music from the African diaspora, Nordic disco, Euro-boogie, and other seemingly exotic plates a New Zealander would find in Europe. The loop started playing again. “Ghost break where are yoooou?” With the musical aesthetic I was now digging, and playing out, now it made more sense than ever. I started going through Breakdance compilations, greatest hits, best of Breakdance vol.1-10... Nadda. Sometimes I would drunk-dial shazaam and sing the hook. Nicht. I even got the free demo of Ableton Live and started sketching what would be my own version. Just in case the ghost was just that- a Ghost. I decided to take it public again, asking all my older music friends, when one British guy said yes! He knew it! “We used to play it heaps! It’s a jam for real, It’s by a group, they’re not that obvious... um, I can’t remember... (jokes about losing brain cells in Ibiza)... They’re not that famous...ummm... it’s on a Loft compilation”
Back on the trail. I listened to every song, ever, put on a Loft compilation. In full. Zip. I found a bunch of unofficial Loft 12s probably pressed up by some enterprising record store person. I listened to every one of them, on Discogs, youtube, Vimeo, or any other media source available. Nope. Web searches for “Rainforest drums boogie breakdance song” and “ percussion Bboy breaking track loft anthem” yielded nothing.
A couple of months, after the hot red herring had cooled down. I was going about my business, doing some washing, and I heard it on a radio show. I sat down, smiled, Inhaled a deep breath, and wrote the song title/artist name on a piece of paper next to the laptop. Exhaled, yelled, whooped, then danced on the sofa, by myself, at 9.26am, 25 March 2016. Here it is:
Afternotes: It’s not that rare a track, but somehow we were ships passing in the night for so long. I now realize, in the youtube comments of some of the other boogie tracks while searching, people said GTA San-Andreas bought them to the page. I never played it (the game)- it was trk2 on the Bounce FM playlist, so minus 50 Sherlock points for me.
The Intro bass line was sampled by Goldie for his track ‘Sensual’, which I know, and love, and was exposed to around the same time I watched the breakdance VHS, I had no idea that the 2 were one and the same, and yet now it makes total sense. Everything is connected.
*what was the radio show? Charlie Bones on NTS