Rennie Pilgrem & The Thursday Club - “Some Place Funky (Back to the Future mix)”
Electric Kingdom: Episode One
1999
Breaks / Nu Breaks / Techno / Drum n Bass
Rennie Pilgrem was one of the premier artists from Britain’s nu breaks scene, a subgenre of electronic music that combined elements of techno and drum n bass to form a new kind of dance music. Music critic John Bush describes Pilgrem’s career:
Stretching from the rave explosion of the early '90s to the development of nu breaks around the end of the millennium, producer/remixer/DJ Rennie Pilgrem has led the way for tough techno. He started out in Rhythm Section, authors of the early breakbeat hit "Feel the Rhythm (Comin on Strong)," and kept producing during the mid-'90s with tracks such as "Thursday Club" for Aura Surround Sounds and R&S. Pilgrem also set up his own Friction label with fellow nu breaks pioneer Adam Freeland, and furthered the sound with a pair of Nu School Breakz compilations.
I don’t know if it’s the compilation’s cover, but when hearing the first few bars of this song, a car racing video game immediately comes to mind. Something about the combination of those reverbed jazzy synths and acidic stabs just makes me imagine that this would be the song that plays from the game’s intro screens to the start menu. Unsurprisingly then, this is a phenomenally good song for driving.
After the jazzy and acidic synth combo, Pilgrem drops a breakbeat that sounds lifted from a drum n bass track. Then he drops all of it to introduce a filtered sampled loop replete with horn stabs and vocals (”We’re going to some place funky!”). He then goes on to combine this sample with what he had previously built before going on a totally unpredictable detour through the 80s with the help of his Roland TR-808 and a jingling drum break with muffled, rumbling bass.
Lots of different sounds and ideas at work here. A fantastic dance track. Add to any high-powered party mix.
P.S.: This song says it’s by Pilgrem and The Thursday Club. The Thursday Club is just an alias for Pilgrem.
