Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 2)

Shaft “Roobarb And Custard” – Inasmuch as dance music can have a ‘self-image’, it’s one of progress: read anyone who writes a lot about dance and you see a healthy fear of inertia and a love of the new. But at the same time there’s always been a revivalist streak there, often deep-buried. The marketing reissue cycles seem to be much shorter when dealing with the (perhaps more frazzled) club demographic than the rock one – ‘old skool’ can mean four or five years ago, ‘…ever!’ means ‘last year at most’ and retro parties are common. You see it particularly with early-90s hardcore rave music, which (very simplistically) arrived close to fully-formed at the top of the British charts, fell from favour and mutated to become darker, and then drifted into stagnation. Lookbacks to 1990-94 or some slice therein have been popular ever since.

At its peak of populism though, rave itself was shot through with a nostalgic spirit. “Toytown Techno” – fast and cheap dance tracks using samples from old kids’ TV themes or adverts or computer games – was hated by the purists but SOMEBODY was buying it in droves. And it turned out that the name producers didn’t mind it either, or didn’t mind cashing in – Aphex Twin put out a Pacman single, and Shaft turned out to be then-hot ambient craftsmen Global Communication in disguise.

Kids TV and rave made a perfect match: the sudden appearance of a half-forgotten tune could trigger “what the fuck??” hysteria in a crowd, and many children’s themes had a faintly demented aura which worked well with the ever-quicker breakbeats. Roobarb And Custard, a cartoon about a yellow dog and a purple cat locked in conflict, was particularly suitable – its main theme was sharp, springly and nagging and (even better!) it had been animated in such a way that every character vibrated and shuddered non-stop at great speed. As an example of the crasser end of dance music, it’s glorious.

Could cartoon rave come back? It barely went away – happy hardcore track makers have long known that filching the break from a familiar tune can bring the rush on nicely – but its chances now seem greater than ever. The massive familiarity of listeners with simple theme tunes (from computer games as well as TV) and the power of the net as a vector for home-made novelties suggest that while it may never be cool again, toytown techno will truly never die.

(Vote for rave in the ongoing poll if you fancy hearing some at the end of the week.)