10 best techstep slammers - Part two
Plus Herbert, Gyrofield, Deep Dish and more
This is part two of my ten biggest techstep slammers. You can read part one - in which I explain my relationship to techstep and talk about tunes from T Power, Dilinja, Ed Rush & Nico, Jonny L and Future Forces Inc. - right here.
6. DJ Krust - Warhead (Steppa mix) December (1997)
Is DJ Krust’s classic Warhead techstep? I didn’t think so. But enough best of techstep lists include it to warrant its inclusion here. And if Warhead is techstep then I certainly don’t want to exclude one of the most influential tunes in jungle from my list (not to mention one of my absolute favourites.)
Krust - who I have written about before - is one of the top jungle producers, a man capable of both brutish force and incredible elegance, often within the same song. He has a host of classic songs to his name, from Fresh 4’s Wishing On A Star to Soul In Motion. But Warhead is the one tune that people will always remember him for, an absolute classic whose bass line alone is worth a place in the British Museum. Warhead, to my mind, doesn’t sound as tech-y and industrial as much techstep. But if techstep is all about bass weight and sonic impact then Warhead has to be in there.
I actually thought Warhead was the first of the BIG bass line tunes to be released. Looking back now, that’s not true. Warhead came out in December 1997, a few months after Jonny L’s Piper, although (as I remember it) Krust made Warhead months before it was released (pretty standard in jungle at the time) and people didn’t really like it at first. When people did get it, though, the tune became ubiquitous and you couldn’t avoid Warhead in drum & bass clubs throughout 1998.
(I remember hearing it at Teknival in spring 1998, an awful gabber rave on the outskirts of Paris where the jungle stage was the most relaxed of all the sound systems by quite a large measure. Let me just say that the experience of Warhead is not improved by having some French bloke MCing along in your ear as you try to dance to what may be the only melody you hear that day.)
But if Warhead wasn’t the first big bass tune, it was definitely the best. The warped bass presence that underpins Warhead was actually the result of a happy accident: when Krust was recording the tune he held a live studio jack in front of a speaker and recorded the feedback, creating a powerful and ever so-slightly twisted bass tone. To this, he added a classic descending bass riff - easy to hum along to, totally unforgettable - drums and lots of small production twists that subtly drive the song along, to the point that Warhead is both minimal and ever changing.
The result is one of those dance tunes that is pretty much perfect. There have been Warhead remixes - notably by TC - but there shouldn’t have been, as you really can’t improve on the original. There is, physically, no way to put together the various elements of Warhead better than Krust did in 1997. So let’s just leave it, eh?
7. Optical - Moving 808s (1997)
What would happen it techstep wasn’t ridiculously heavy, just for a change? It wouldn’t be techstep, you might answer, with some justification. But when it comes from Optical, one of the most important producers in the whole techstep scene, engineer to Grooverider and Goldie and half of the legendary Ed Rush and Optical pairing, then it just might.
And this is what happens on Moving 808s. It’s not a quiet tune, exactly. But it doesn’t have the furious brute force of a lot of techstep. Yes, there’s a huge, bass-y riff at its centre but it feels oddly thoughtful, like Godzilla having an oceanic crisis of confidence. There’s no drop, either, which confirms my suspicion that Moving 808s, although eminently danceable, isn’t a dance-floor track either.
Instead, Moving 808s is a work of sonic art, to be studied at length. There’s a reason that people like Grooverider and Goldie reached out to Optical: his production skills are absolutely next level, like music beamed in from a few centuries into the future. And Moving 808s - which, as I explained in part one, was one of the first techstep tunes I heard - is the peak of his work. Every single sound is honed and crafted to perfection. I was going to say “polished” but that might give the wrong impression: Moving 808s is spikey, a little grimey maybe, shot through with the suggestion of well-curated dirt, rather than dirt itself. If you want to know why drum & bass producers were so feted for their production skills in the late 90s, look no further.
8. Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce – Alien Girl (1998)
If I had - at sonic gunpoint - to choose one song that sums up techstep, it would be Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce’s Alien Girl from 1998, a track that epitomises the sheer mechanical evil of the genre at its best / worst.
Alien Girl has a vast bass line, the sound of a metal guitar riff pumped through 1,000 drum & bass compressors, which seems to drift in and out of field as if it forcing its way through a deadlocked door by heaviness alone. But that’s not even the nastiest thing about the track. The drums are horribly basic, a stupidly optimised bass thud played off against overdriven snare, while a hi hat cuts throats in the background. There are some unnerving electronic pops and fizzes, a single chord of maximal doom and - worst of all - at the end of every eight bars an almost human noise that sounds like a computer simulation of a cry for mercy, emphasising the alien nature of the song in particular and techstep in general.
Alien Girl was everywhere in 1998, as was its excellent B side Cutslo (Lokuste Mix). But, as mentioned in part one, if you want to hear it in its full dread, I would seek the song out not in a techstep mix but in Grooverider’s FabricLive 06, where the contrast between its doomy tech swirl and Peshay’s uplifting D&B classic You Got Me Burning makes Alien Girl feel even more inhospitable.
9. Dom & Roland - Thunder (1998)
Optical shows up again on Industry, the debut studio album by Dom & Roland (aka Dominic Angas - the Roland in the name is a reference to his sampler), collaborating on two tracks, Timeframe (which hit a stately 99 on the UK singles chart) and Anaesthetic.
The track I have gone for, though, is the unforgettable Thunder, which opens the album. Techstep is often criticised - and, yes, I am as guilty of this as anyone - as sacrificing the intricacy of jungle’s drum programming for the intensity of the bass. And, in many tunes, this is true. But not in Thunder, which combines the razor-sharp precision of Photek’s best beats, with an air of industrial hell scape that Ed Rush and Nico could call their own, combined with a tortured hoover synth operating somewhere in the background that gives Thunder the subtlest air of rave, just as techstep was ushering in the end of the rave dream.
I was going to say that Thunder sounds like Photek gone techstep; but Photek had already gone techstep by this point, notably on his astounding 1997 production The Third Sequence, made for the Wipeout 2097 soundtrack, a track guaranteed to give gamers evil sweats and lingering nightmares.
10. Digital - Deadline (2000)
For the last tune in my list, we’re back in Paris - or rather I was in spring 2000. As I mentioned in part one, Paris didn’t have much of a drum & bass scene when I was living there and I didn’t have anyone to go to jungle clubs with. Until I did and we went to a mid-week D&B night at the Batofar, a suitably cramped lifehouse boat turned night club that was moored on the Seine near the Bibliothèque François-Mitterand.
The DJ that night was, I think, Norwegian pioneer Teebee. But if I don’t quite remember that, two tunes did stick in my mind: Kosheen’s vocal anthem Hide U (which I will argue is a tune until the end of my days, despite whatever else the band might have done); and Deadline by Ipswich producer Digital, who had been releasing music since the mid 90s but really came into his own here.
Deadline is a very unusual tune. The drums have an almost dancehall feel and there is, as far as I can make out, not a single snare drum in the whole production. But that wasn’t what I noticed on Deadline. What I noticed was the classic, panic-y but infectious, rising synth line, a riff so addictive and exciting it seems to raise the heartbeat on every repetition.
Deadline doesn’t use a Shepard Tone - the famed audio illusion that makes a sound seem to continuously rise or fall in pitch - but it might as well have done, the song climbing and climbing and climbing inexorably, until you feel like you can’t take any more. (But you’d like to give it a go anyway.)
PS I have a playlist with a lot of these tunes (some aren’t on streaming) for those interested, on Apple Music and Spotify.
PPS Millsy . who appeared in part one - sent me his 10 best techstep tunes:
Dillinja - Acid Trak
Optical - Moving 808s
Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce - Cutslo (Lokuste Mix)
Technical Itch - Protection
Technical Itch - The Virus (remix)
Matrix vs Dilemma - Spring Box (Vocal remix)
Optical - The Shining
Ed Rush & Optical - Satellites
John B - USA
Ils & Solo - Frozen (Dom and Roland remix)
Some listening
For all that I adore Matthew Herbert’s experiments into pig sampling and dead horses, there is a part of me that wishes he would, at some point, re-embrace the elegant wonk-pop-house of the classic Bodily Functions album. Maybe Clay, his new record with percussionist and singer Momoko Gill, will be that time. Certainly, the lethally addictive low-slung grooves of Babystar suggest something similar, the song combining Momoko’s nagging hooks and neatly lolloping drum line, with a synth line that sounds sun-warped and beautiful. Babystar is one of the most nonchalantly brilliant house tunes I have heard in ages.
Hands up who else was hoping this would be a cover of Goldie’s Mother in all its hour-long glory? Well, it isn’t. But, while gyrofield’s track may only weigh in at a puny six minutes, it does have something of Goldie’s magnus opus to it, in the producer’s embrace of open-hearted emotion over clattering breaks, the vocal spinning a tale of hurt that seems to drift up and along, born aloft by nimbostratus bass and synth waft. Hopefully gyrofield won’t have to wait two decades for their Mother to get its due, either.
If a lot of the club music coming from Latin America sounds a lot fresher than what Europe is producing - and it often does - could it simply be because producers in Latin America haven’t forgotten how to have fun? Listen to the latest tech house drudgery by a big European producer as it rolls out its predictable patterns; was anyone having fun here? It sure doesn’t sound like it. And contrast with JOJO by Colombian DJ / producer Rachiid Paralyzing. It sounds like he’s having a riot, alive with the brilliant possibilities that electronic music can bring, all nutty rushes, scrapes, bubbles, squirts and other sonic nonsense, laid over a pulsing house beat, with just the slightest touch of Dembow. His forthcoming EP is excellent too.
Fat Dog - Peace Song (A riot in Sydenham Bus Depot TowerBlock 1 mix)
I’ve been listening to The KLF recently for a forthcoming Line Noise post and I was just thinking what a shame it is that they don’t make music any more when this gem landed in my inbox: a remix of London grime rock charmers Fat Dog by former KLF man Jimmy Cauty. I like Fat Dog - in fact I interviewed them last year - and Peace Song is probably their best song, with a ravishing, slightly spectral backing vocal. But I didn’t expect something this great, as Cauty unleashes a massive NWA-style drum machine and Amen drum backing underneath their South London smarts to make the absolute most of those BVs. This might be the best music that Cauty has put his name to since the glory days of The KLF. And that is saying something.
Aquarhythms - Ether’s Whisper (Dubfire and Sharam remix)
Earlier this year when the Line Noise podcast celebrated its 200th edition, I mentioned some of my dream guests for the show in a highly self-congratulatory post. Deep Dish - the titanic 90s house duo - were among them and, tariff relief be praised, I managed to interview Dubfire and Sharam earlier this month. It will be out… soon.
Deep Dish are known for their peerless remixes (among other things), with career re-defining takes on the likes of Sandy B and De’Lacy to their name. So I asked them what their favourites were of their own remixes and they mentioned this gently psychedelic take on Aquarhythms’ Ether’s Whisper, originally released in 1996 and now largely lost to history. (Well, I had never heard of it, anyway, although it was re-released on Bandcamp in 2020.)
Lord what a tune it is. You expect house music from Deep Dish and this isn’t it; or not really, it’s floaty and psychedelic and adventurous and dreamy and dubby and yet still kind of swinging at the same time. If an adventurous psych rock band from late 1960s San Francisco were catapulted forward in time to 1996 and told to listen to Orbital, they might make something like this. Although probably not quite as good.
Things I’ve Done
Line Noise podcast - With Flabbergast (Guillaume Coutu Dumont + Vincent Lemieux)
Last week it was Mutek Connect in Barcelona and to celebrate Johann and I spoke to Vincent Lemieux, who has booked artists for the festival since (almost) the very beginning, and weird house hero Guillaume Coutu Dumont, who has played Mutek more than any other artist. We spoke about what makes Mutek different and their mythical White Wale of festival booking. We also talked about the duo’s musical output as Flabbergast, sampling bagpipes, remixing Kool Keith and more.
The playlists
“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by playlist.” So (almost) spoke Plato. And he knew what he was talking about. (Most of the time anyway.) Luckily, I have two playlists: The newest and bestest 2025; and The newest and the bestest (unbridled by time). Do follow them for all the best new music.
I was hoping for some Dom + Roland - totally awesome selection and love the playlist. Pity Silver Blade isn’t on streaming though!
No argument about "Hide U", even if it's a bit repetitive, used to love mixing this with Nasty Habits—Deep Beats.